Social Media

Yesterday, we brought you news of MySpace's surprising Data Portability partnerships with Yahoo!, Twitter, and Ebay, which will allow MySpace users to port their public profiles, photos, videos and some friend data from one site to another. Facebook, not looking to be outdone, has announced plans to launch their new Facebook Connect platform, which has similar functionality to MySpace's Data Availability. What Is It? Facebook says they're "committed to enabling people to communicate and stay connected wherever they go" and looks to execute on this statement with Facebook Connect. The Facebook…

Everyone is talking about Twitter (to the consternation of many of our readers, I'm sure), but what are people talking about on Twitter? It is really just a flood of inane status updates and fragmented chat, or are people actually talking about things that matter to them via the service? We've talked about Twitter as a platform for serious discussion, but is anyone really using it that way? We teamed up with Summize to take a closer look about what people are talking about in the Twitosphere. Summize looked at about 4 million Twitter status update messages (tweets) collected from the public…

oEmbed is a newly released spec from Cal Henderson (of Flickr), Mike Malone and Leah Culver (of Pownce), and Richard Crowley (of OpenDNS) that allows web sites to quickly and easily embed media when a user posts a link directly to that resource. oEmbed is an open format which standardizes the process of embedding photos, videos, links, or other media and circumvents the media provider's API (or the need for screen scraping if they don't offer one). It works by turning a link to, say, a photo or video into XML or JSON that tells the user how to embed that media. "oEmbed is a format for…

Roofarena is basically the Million Dollar Homepage concept built as a graphical layer on top of Google Maps. The idea is that any roof in Manhattan is for sale and users can "virtually" purchase a roof and add their own design. In a post about copycat ideas last year, we advised that if you "do feel the need to borrow an idea, you should definitely make changes and try to innovate and push the concept in new directions." Roofarena definitely does that, but we also advised that you do something to "ensure a greater chance of success" -- we're not sure that the site does that. One problem with…

You've probably heard people talking about the new "it" book: "Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies." The book discusses the current trend of people using online social technologies like blogs, social networks, and podcasts, among other things, and how enterprise must learn to embrace these tools. Along with describing how the public's use of these technologies impacts businesses, the book also provides tools from Forrester to teach companies how to embrace social media as part of their business strategy. For anyone interested in social…

Facebook is about to spend big on upgrading its infrastructure. According to Business Week, the social network has closed a deal to take a $100 million loan (“venture lending”), all of which will be spent on new servers. Facebook gives up no equity as part of the deal. Business Week explains how this type of loan works: “Venture lending peaked during the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s and early part of this decade, but is making a comeback as startups use debt to pay for computer servers, telecom gear, and software … The TriplePoint lease has a degree of flexibility not offered by a…

Online comparison tools typically come into play when you’ve got some shopping to do, but there are other reasons why you may feel the need to compare items across multiple points. Some of you would even enjoy comparison just for the sake of it, so here’s a new tool for you. Communipare is launching the US version of its comparison widget tool, giving you a compounded, portable version of a comparison chart. You can create your own, or use one that’s been created by another person. What Communipare does is compress all the points of comparison for you, resulting in a chart…

The news has been rife with OpenID as of late. A few services have quietly launched OpenID authentication I’ve notice lately.  Last week it was UStream.TV, as well as SourceForge, amongst others.  It’s nice to see OpenID receiving wider adoption, but today, there’s a bit of news submitted by Allen Stern over at CenterNetworks regarding some innovation going into the OpenID protocol as well: On Monday, Janrain, the group managing the OpenID protocol will announce a new “strong authentication” option for Web sites utilizing the OpenID login option. This new…

Health search engine Healia has recently launched some community-driven verticals in order to provide additional value to users. This is something that several health-related search tools have done, in order to supplement existing search content with user-generated content. This is typically a tricky situation for the health sector because of the sensitive and legal nature that can arise with user-generated content being provided within a health-related vertical. Some ways in which others in the health search industry, like Hakia, have begun to ensure quality content alongside user-generated…

Editor’s Note: If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion in “The Startup Review” series, please see the details here. STARTUP DETAILS: Company Name: NoMoreNotebooks 20-word Pitch: No More Notebooks brings social shopping online, allowing you to automatically add products to your “wishlists” through a personal bookmarklet. CEO’s Description: My name is Luke Harrison and I have recently finished my final year project for my New Media degree at The University of Leeds, UK. For this I have created a brand new social networking website based around…

Sarah Lacy appeared on Fox Business this evening on their "Happy Hour" show to promote her upcoming book. Host Cody Willard should stick to financial topics - whenever he crosses over to tech, it just doesn't work. See our previous example for another example where Cody explains how Facebook's Beacon works. Sarah begins by defining Web 2.0 as, "basically the collection of companies that started around 2002-2005 and the hallmark is user-generated content, social media and social networking." She names Facebook and YouTube as Web 2.0 companies. Then Cody shows his real…

On Monday, JanRain, a leader in the OpenID community will introduce a new "strong authentication" option to it's myOpenID.com users. This new strong authentication is named CallVerifID and could replace access keys and keycard devices over time. CallVerifID uses the PhoneFactor service from Positive Networks. Janrain explains how this new verification service works, "This phone-based authentication service can use any phone (mobile or landline) as a second authentication factor. The user enters a myOpenID username and password as usual, then simply answers an automated instant…

IZEA (formerly PayPerPost) CEO Ted Murphy is on the offensive today. Last night he asked me on Twitter to review a post on the IZEA blog regarding performance of his paid blog network versus an advertising campaign on ReadWriteWeb (RWW), an "a-list" tech blog. If you read only a few posts today, his should be one of them. In general, Murphy's analysis could work for any display advertising. He begins by explaining that he purchased a one-month advertisement on ReadWriteWeb for $3,000 and then purchased $3,000 worth of paid posts within the IZEA network. The paid posts came from 220…

Jakob Nielsen recently published two interesting research statistics that help explain why display ads don't work. First, Jakob says we read a very small amount of the text on most pages. Apparently we only, on average, read at best 28% of the words on the page and most likely around 20% of the words. Second, in an older article from late last year, Jakob also says users avoid anything that looks like a banner. This may seem obvious, but the interesting thing to consider is that all web pages on a given site (and even across the web on different sites) are likely to have the same pattern for…

Below are five of the newest startups according to Killer Startups for the period ending May 9, 2008. Check out previous Killer Startups posts. 3DegreesInc - Carbon Calculator 3Degrees is a site that focuses on protecting the environment by supporting clean energy and carbon reducing projects. The name comes from the scientific projection that in 2100 the earth's temperature will rise by 3 degrees Celsius which will cause huge environmental issues that will affect society. 3Degrees is a great site to visit and educate yourself on the impacts of pollution and ways in which you can reduce your…

OpenOffice, the free opensource office suite, released OpenOffice 3.0 Beta yesterday. This latest release now runs on Mac OS X without requiring X11 to be running as well. And there are versions for Windows and Linux obviously. There are a host of new features like ODF Support, Office 2007/8 import/export and support for up to 1024 columns on the spreadsheet app to name but a few. With the killer combination of Google Docs (Google’s great hosted office app), OpenOffice and OOo2GD (an app to synch between OpenOffice and Google Docs), the justification for spending any amount of money on…

Twitterfone launched last night to a spectacular response. Mike Arrington gave it a glowing report on TechCrunch and the feedback has been very positive. What does Twitterfone do? Not much! It does one thing and it does it well. It allows you to dial a local number, leave a short message, the message is then transcribed and posted to your Twitter account along with a link to the audio file in case the transcription doesn’t quite come out. The best use case for this is in your car when you shouldn’t can’t browse! I have no idea how well it works if you are outside your own…

If you are getting tired of Facebook, you will appreciate this (and even if you are not getting tired of Facebook, watch this and you might start to see why it has become really annoying!).

I’m in Las Vegas for the EnergyCamp conference. I had a couple of hours today so I decided to check out the local Electronics stores. When I went into the Circuit City store I was approached by a member of staff who informed me that I “needed to leave my rucksack with customer service near the front of the store”! I resent being told that. I resent the implication that because I have a rucksack, I am a thief. My rucksack contained my laptop and several other items of value to me. If Circuit City don’t trust me with their valuables, why should I trust them with mine? I…

This year’s Startup 2.0, a European competition for Web 2.0 startups, was launched the other day. Submissions are accepted for blogs, wikis, social networks or any other website which makes a high use of Web 2.0 components, such as tags, RSS, collaboration or Ajax. Companies and people from any European country willing to present their projects just have to submit them. Entries are judged not only the quality of the website but also the business model and the creativity of their video presentation. Internet users and a jury will select 10 projects to be presented in Barcelona on May…

Today there was a little excitement in the Rowse House. On returning from a morning out there was a parcel sitting on our doorstep. On opening it I found: It’s been fun to watch many of you ordering, receiving and even reviewing the ProBlogger book - but it’s a very strange feeling to hold it in your hands after all this time of working on it. While blogging and authoring a book have some pretty similar tasks involved in putting them together - a blog is a fairly intangible thing while our little book is… well it’s something that I can hold. I also think it’s…

In this series I’m examining tactics that can be used to increase AdSense earnings immediately. Read the introduction to this series here. Today I want to talk about positioning your AdSense ads - something that has a very significant impact upon the amount of money that they are able to earn. I learned this lesson after I’d been using AdSense for some time - I often wish I’d discovered it earlier - because not thinking it through earlier cost me a significant amount of money! My Story of Learning about AdSense Positioning I remember clearly the time that my AdSense earnings…

What would you say if I told you that there are things that many bloggers could do on their blogs that could bring about large increases in their AdSense earnings in 24 hours or less? One of the misconceptions about making money from blogging that is out there is that the best way to increase your blog’s earnings is to increase the traffic to your blog. “Double your traffic and you’ll double your income” I heard one speaker say at a conference earlier in the year. Well that speaker is right…. increased traffic generally does lead to increased advertising…

Yesterday I wrote 5 tips to help increase your follower numbers on Twitter. Thanks to everyone for your comments and suggestions on the topic. As I read over the comments I realized that there were a few more things that I’d been learning on how to use Twitter that might be worth sharing. So over the coming few days I’ll pick up a few threads of thought that your comments sparked for me on the topic of growing your Twitter Presence. Today I want to talk about a tactic that I’ve used a little lately that might help those of you who don’t live in parts of the world where…

Last month at Digital Photography School I ran the biggest competition that I’ve ever run (on that blog). I put a $729 Nikon DSLR up for grabs for one lucky active member in my the forum attached to the blog. The competition was successful in my mind but today while I was doing a little analysis on it I thought it might make an interesting case study for ProBlogger. I hope you find it useful as you consider the option of running competitions to promote your blogs. Note: I’ve previously written on How to run a successful competition on your blog - and much of my strategy for this…

Microsoft withdrawing its offer to buy Yahoo is a sufficiently large story to demonstrate the problem of redundant news content on the web. Google News is currently tracking about 2,000 versions of this story. To get a better sense of why it’s a problem to have 2,000 stories about the SAME THING, I’ve reproduced about ten percent of them below — just the headlines and ledes. If you have the stomach to scroll through them all to see what else I have to say about it, check out the sources as you scroll: UPDATE: The Google News example is reproduced here instead. You’re…

There are two principal ways advertisers are trying to create value for consumers on the web — and they must create value because, you know, consumers are in control. On the web, advertisers can provide entertainment or information. How effective is advertising as information on the web? See Google’s $15B in ad revenue — an $5.19 billion in ad revenue in Q1 2008. The technology of web search enabled advertisers to create value for consumers in a way that was never possible in analogue media. Searching for a product or service? Here’s a link to information on that…

Some publishers choose a paid subscription model, some choose an ad sales model, and some choose both as a revenue stream—a business decision with rippling implications for marketing and content strategies. During a panel session at MarketingSherpa Selling Online Subscriptions Summit, May 12-13 in New York City, executives from Zagat Survey, Rivals.com (from Yahoo! Sports) and Hoover’s will reveal why their companies chose the hybrid model, the pros and cons they weighed in making the decision, and the sales and marketing strategies that followed these decisions. The panel participants,…

The other day Erick Schonfeld wrote a post about how he’s feeling even more overwhelmed by new web content steams like Twitter and FriendFeed, and how he’s desperately in need of a better filter. I certainly agree with Erick’s clarion call for a better filter — that’s why I’m devoting all my time to empowering mainstream journalists to filter the web through link journalism (so many of the people who are great information filters aren’t doing so on the web). But it struck me when I was looking at Erick’s screen capture of a seemingly endless…

Facebook has had an update feature similar to Twitter for a while. Now Facebook has a feature that lets users add feeds from other web services like Flickr and del.icio.us — just like FriendFeed. From a technology perspective, Twitter and FriendFeed are now reducable to Facebook features. Even if those two apps are currently more robust than their equivalent Facebook features, there’s nothing to stop Facebook from copying them in their entirety. So are Twitter and FriendFeed features, or are they companies? Eric Eldon makes a strong case that many of Facebook’s younger core…

Worldwide mobile content revenues are expected to surpass $44 billion by 2011, so it shouldn’t surprise anyone that mobile entertainment and campaigns are growing annually by leaps and bounds, with marketers beginning to investigate mobile opportunities seriously. Marketing Voices spoke with the head of Phluant Mobile, David Breckling, to find out what the trends and challenges are in executing innovative mobile marketing campaigns. Tags: mobile, mobile entertainment, Marketing Voices, Phluant Mobile, David Breckling

Marketers are looking for a way to make the customer’s online experience better. Kerry Bodine, principal analyst of Forrester gets just how to do that. She explores how user-centered design processes, design-centric corporate cultures, and organizational structure contribute to the creation and sustainability of superior customer experiences. Marketing Voices spoke to Kerry at the Forrester Marketing Forum in early April about her perspective. Tags: Forrester, forrester marketing forum, Interactive Web Design, Jennifer Jones, Kerry Bodine, Marketing, Marketing Voices, social media

Groundswell guides companies to a winning perspective on social media and marketing. The co-authors Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff spoke with Marketing Voices about some of the companies they think are getting it right. (It’s worth hearing what they have to say about Ernst & Young, for example.). Tags: Charlene Li, Ernst and Young, Forrester, Groundswell, Jennifer Jones, Josh Bernoff, Marketing, Marketing Voices, social media

Most of the time online interaction goes well for companies. Transparency is becoming more accepted and problems are rare. But what does a company or person do if they are attacked? Marketing Voices talks to Denise Shiffman, author of The Age of Engage and founder of Venture Essentials about what a company’s strategy should be if negative attacks happen.

Adam Metz, partner with theMIX, a firm that blends social Web strategy, business development and PR spoke to Marketing Voices when he was still with LaunchSquad. They talked about how to most effectively assess a company’s “social media position” and what tools are being used most frequently in his client’s work today. See his blog at metzmash.com. Tags: Adam Metz, theMIX, social Web strategy, Marketing Voices, LaunchSquad, social media position, Web strategy, metrics

Bootstrapping your niche is easier if you leverage existing motivation. How do you bootstrap your social site if you’re targeting a group that doesn’t yet use software (or doesn’t seem interested in using software)? While software designers can often see how useful their tool can be, normal users aren’t so prescient. How do you get them to see the value in your software? Eric DeLabar brings up this question in response to my post on the power of niche social network sites last week: “I’ve always had a problem wrapping my head around this exact topic. Having…

The power of niche social sites isn’t just in connecting people, it’s in providing tools that allow people to do something better than they could before…or, the reason why PatientsLikeMe is an amazing web site. Ravelry.com is a social network site for the “knit and crochet community”. A site for knitters, you ask? What will they think of next…a site for dog owners? The reason why Revelry.com and other niche sites seem so alien is because they support communities that we often don’t see because we don’t participate in them. My wife is a knitter,…

A bit of local news to share with you: Boston Web Studio: Marc Amos, whom I met through local meetups, has taken the plunge and is now an independent web designer/developer specializing in creating attractive, modern, accessible web sites that appeal to the visitors your business needs to reach. Congrats, Marc! Best of luck with your new venture. Social Media for Social Change: Michelle Riggen-Ransom (with whom I had a marathon argument at SXSW with about whether altruism exists) has also taken the plunge and started a blog on a topic near and dear to my heart: exploring how technology can…

Jeremiah Owyang claims that people don’t trust bloggers. To back up this claim, he cites three market research studies showing that when given a choice, people would choose to listen to their friends and family rather than “bloggers”. The three studies were done by respected marketing research companies: Forrester, Edelman, and Pollara. They all agree on the same thing: that bloggers just don’t elicit much trust when compared to other sources of information. I can’t help but think that these studies weighted the questions…oh just a little bit. I mean, who…

Has it really been nine months? Last August, when I decided to go out on my own and start Bokardo Design, I also began writing a book on a new aspect of design that I called “social design”. Social design was the term I used when thinking about and designing for the social interactions between people using software. It was clear to me that web sites and applications were “going social”, meaning that they were realizing that improving the interactions between their audience was key to their ongoing success, not just having conversations with the audience themselves. I…

My friend, Joel Mark Witt, is part of a band of merry folk working on an interesting spin on a BarCamp called DevCamp, with a focus on social software applications. It’s coming up this weekend, so if you’re in the Baltimore area, check it out: Join Us To Explore The Future Of The Social Web At DevCamp East 2008 When: May 10 - All Day Where: University of Baltimore, Baltimore, Maryland SocialDevCamp East is the Unconference for Thought Leaders of the Future Social Web Where is the social web going? It’s going mobile, to geocentric services, and to open platforms. Join a…

Outside our ITEC Houston event, representatives from the SEIU service union are protesting for worker’s rights. I spoke with a few of them, and what might have been their PR representative. They want better wages, health care, and to protest other concerns they have with their work conditions. Meanwhile, I’m inside at the CrossTech Partners booth with an ear infection, deaf in that ear, and thinking about what else needs doing. Wishing you well. ShareThis

Marketing Profs is throwing a Business to Business Forum event on June 9th-10th in Boston, focusing on Driving Sales: What’s New and What Works. I’m one of the speakers, as are some of my friends: Ann Handley Greg Verdino David Meerman Scott Scott Monty Valeria Maltoni Tons more folks are also speaking that I’ve yet to meet. It’s not free, but it’s reasonable for a two day event with lots of sales and marketing leadership information. If you’re interested, check out the event page for more information. ShareThis

Some of you sent mail asking whether I was going to stop blogging. Short answer: no. I could just as much stop blogging as I could stop breathing. For over ten years (a decade!), I have been writing my thoughts and ideas down onto the Internet for people to take away, change, challenge, and adapt. Not because I just want to give ideas away, but because you enrich me with your thoughts and points of view, and because I love seeing where you go with the things I put out for consideration. Some of you asked me what book it was that I read on the plane that helped me gain my most recent…

Doing anything well requires the ability to keep your plates clean and ready to accept a helping of what comes next, but by saying yes to every little thing that comes along, one will be less likely to be ready to handle the things that come up. ( David Allen, author of Getting Things Done, handled this topic well in his book, Ready for Anything). In looking over all that I have on my plate, I realize that I have to go back and say no to a few things, in order to be fair to my more pressing obligations. I should state clearly that part of this stems from my eagerness to please, and my own…

images source: theclones.fr I would like to draw your attention to an interesting research tracing preferences of fashion clothing, denim in specific. Synovate surveyed around 7,700 people in the United States, Canada, Brazil, France, Taiwan, Korea, Malaysia, Serbia, Russia and South Africa. I was fascinated to find so many culture differences originating in social norms: French were the ones to show style differentiations (highly in favor of jeans in the office, while finding it inappropriate to wear in parties). Americans report not to follow street fashion or celebrities. (I’m sure…

Universal McCann’s survey showed Video Clips are the quickest growing platform, up from 31% penetration in Wave 1 to 83% in Wave 3.  A recent study carried out by Synovate in behalf of ClipBlast! (March 08) shows that when it comes to finding online video, search takes a backseat to unaided navigation (also known as discovery) and content recommendations. 53% found videos through their own exploration 52% found through recommendations from others 40% searched for specific videos Other forms of video findability - 18% following online recommendations from people they didn’t…

World Health Organization describes tobacco as epidemic & announced a new program MPOWER to increase smoking prevention efforts in the developing world. The global stats are mind-blowing. There are more than one billion smokers in the world. Globally, use of tobacco products is increasing, although it is decreasing in high-income countries. More than 80% of the world’s smokers live in low- and middle-income countries. Almost half of the world’s children breathe air polluted by tobacco smoke. Tobacco use kills 5.4 million people a year - an average of one person every six seconds -…

image source: w3.org Few days ago Twitter has announced its Japanese version. Why did twitter choose Japan for its first localized version? 2007 stats show a high tendency in favor of twitter platform among Japanese users: • In a Japanese online survey – 25% showed an interest in a Japanese version of “Twitter”. • Tokyo – was found to be the number 1 city in the world with the most twitterers Japanese, leading the mobile web revolution, are the ultimate group to adopt a mobile based instant platform. As suggested in the Guardian review, Japanese are known as the “Thumb Tribe”…

Universal McCann has recently published its comparative study following Social Media trends by three waves: September 2006 (Wave 1), June 2007 (Wave 2) March 2008 (Wave 3). Research highlights: 1. Social media is a global phenomenon happening in all markets regardless of wider economic, social and cultural development. 2. Asian markets (not including Japan) are leading in terms of participation, creating more content than any other region 3. All social media platforms have grown significantly over the three Waves: Video Clips are the quickest growing platform, up from 31% penetration in Wave…

David Risley this morning wrote about all the noise in all these systems like Twitter and FriendFeed. Of course that kicked off a whole discussion over on FriendFeed. Oh, the glorious noise! Everyone loves beating me up for causing the noise. No, I am not the cause. I pass it along. You should see my inbound streams. Every second or two a new Twitter is aimed at me. Every few seconds, a new blog post comes into Google Reader. Every few seconds, a new thing on FriendFeed. 24 hours a day of noise. And we’re not even counting the professional noise over on TechMeme and Google News. Buried…

I just visited the offices of Lefora, free forum hosting, who is making cool new forum software that goes in interesting new directions that I haven’t seen forum software or services do yet. Stuff like embeddable YouTube videos with just copying the URL. And I +love+ the color theme selector they have. You’ll see that in the video demo I just filmed with Vinnie Lauria, VP of product. Paul Bragiel, CEO, told me a lot more about the company and its plans in a separate video. An example of their new forums can be found on their “fun stuff forum.” UPDATE: In just a few…

New 3G iPhone is coming this summer, it seems. Will Patrick and I wait in line overnight again like we did last year? No. Why? Even though the line was a heck of a lot of fun, I think that’s a one-time deal. It’s pretty clear there won’t be any scarcity (there wasn’t any real scarcity last time, either) and I doubt Bill Atkinson (Apple’s first software developer) will come and wait in line overnight with us like he did the first time. That said, I will be one of the first to buy the 3G version. I hope it has video on it. The downside? With millions of people…

OK, over the past few hours I’ve gone crazy with Google Reader’s shared note feature. You can see how I’m using it on my shared items feed, which has a cool new ninja design (another new feature shipped yesterday). It’s interesting, but leaves me wanting a LOT more. For instance, if you share an item, add a note, I can’t pass those notes along to my readers. I can on FriendFeed, though. I also can’t edit my notes. You can on FriendFeed though. I also can’t comment on your notes without resharing an item, which causes duplication of an item if…

I love the idea of Google Reader’s new “share note” feature, but find it lacking in implementation — watch along in this video review. What’s really wrong with it? 1. It’s breaking on my machines. No way to cancel note that I can see, and UI is not coming up. I’m sure that’s a temporary problem, so let’s discount that. 2. It’s causing a LOT of new duplication of items (which was a major problem in Google Reader before this, but is even worse after). Why? Well, I share one item, then I decide “I’d like add a note to…

This post was updated at 1:56 p.m. PDT. Social network Facebook announced Friday the debut of Facebook Connect, a new technology for members to connect their profile data and authentication credentials to external Web sites. It makes the company the latest major Web site to embrace the concept ...

Reuters is reporting that shares of Blinkx, a publicly traded video search site based in the U.K., climbed 50 percent on Friday following rumors that corporate giants Google and News Corp. may be vying for an acquisition. On Friday morning, Blinkx shares were trading at 36.75 pence, their ...

Sun Microsystems has bragged for 13 years now that Java security features keep the programming technology virus-free. Apparently, the same doesn't hold for the JavaOne trade show. The San Francisco Department of Public Health put out a release Thursday with an alert that "several" people had become ill after ...

Last.fm, the social music service that CBS Interactive acquired last year, is venturing into original content for the first time with a new video series called Last.fm Presents. The series consists of interviews with popular and rising bands and artists; among the first artists featured are techno legend ...

Later, gator.Google has announced the shutdown of Hello, a sort of photo-messaging service that became part of the Mountain View family when Google acquired Picasa in 2004. "All good things come to an end," a placeholder on the Hello.com home page says. "So it is with sadness that ...

It seems that plans are in the works for a slimmed down, condensed version of the German Wikipedia to be made into a printed encyclopedia book and it will be sold in bookstores for 20 Euros ($32). As many people have said, it’s “reverse publishing”. I say it’s a bit of a scam on the part of the German publisher Bertelsmann. I am a nitty-gritty practical kind of guy and my initial thought was this : if Wikipedia is made up of voluntary user contributions, does Wikipedia first of all have legal permission from the writers to print the material? Did they get legal waivers…

Coming from a police family, I have always had enormous respect for law enforcement and the job they do, and after having just seen the Facebook application for the Greater Manchester Police (GMP) in Great Britain, I am even more impressed. This just goes to prove that Facebook CAN be useful. Take away all the pokes, games, fortune cookies and other time-wasting applications and you can actually come away with something useful in the end. Despite living nowhere near Manchester (and despite being a fine upstanding citizen of the law), I decided to install the application to see what it…

Never a day goes by without me hearing of another case of how people are getting more and more hacked off about Facebook and its never-ending crappy applications. All I can say is, I can feel the pain. There used to be a time when someone would ask me what the difference was between Facebook and MySpace and I would immediately answer “Facebook is the mature adult version of MySpace”. These days, I can’t say that without cracking up and apologising for telling such a blatant lie. Looking at my Facebook account today, I have 138 friend requests from people I don’t know…

My current social media obsession is Friendfeed. I like it for a variety of reasons but the main reason is that it pulls together nicely all my various online activities. Being a tech blogger, I tend to try out every online service under the sun and so it gets more and more difficult to keep track of them all. Friendfeed brings everything together under one umberella and then it gives you a RSS feed to hand out to anyone interested in tracking you. So if you have an online stalker or six, life has just got a lot easier for them.   Who needs Google Alerts anymore? But my other obsession is…

Andrew Baron tried selling his account on eBay this week. The eBay auction has closed, but you can still see the bidding history here, as it went as high as $1,550. Publicity stunt? Yes. Original? Yes. The real story here was that it received lots of exposure. Speaking of exposure, is a limited commercialization of Twitter such a bad thing for both the folks that make it (Obvious Corp) and the folks that use it (Us)? Don’t we want Biz, Ev, and all the other folks at Obvious to have a sound business venture? Otherwise, we’ll have to start complaining about Twitter going down all…

What if you could take location as a given in the design of web applications and services? By that I mean, what if — when someone who has never used your service before shows up, signs up (ideally with an OpenID!) — and it’s both trivial and desirable for her to provide you with access to some aspect of her physical location in the world… and she does? What would you do? How would you change the architecture of your service to leverage this new “layer” of information? Would you use it to help her connect to and find others in her proximity (or maybe avoid…

Eran just announced the second draft of OAuth Discovery, the first implementation of the XRDS-Simple specification that I mentioned here just over a week ago. What’s significant about this announcement, as Eran points out, is that the new draft is already implemented and deployed by FireEagle (a Yahoo! Brickhouse service), Ma.gnolia, and Get Satisfaction — three leaders in the OAuth community. On the development tools front, Mediamatic will release initial support for discovery early next week with full support due early May in their OAuth PHP library. This draft is a complete…

Ma.gnolia’s not the first to move to OpenID-only signups, but perhaps one of the first to remove the ability to create new Ma.gnolia-only accounts in favor of the alternative. If you previously created a Ma.gnolia account you can still sign in with your email address or username and password, but new accounts must be generated using remote credentials from services like Facebook or Yahoo!, or with any OpenID. This approach offers a couple benefits as well as drawbacks. It’s important to think through these issues from a number of perspectives (users, community, developers and site…

The little guys keep building the future of the web in little steps. Well, okay, I shouldn’t use such hubris, but I’m pretty proud of our little squad of do-gooders, developing quality technology that I think IS advancing the state of the web, and doing so without any budget whatsoever, and without any kind of centralized resources (can you tell I’ve been hanging out in Redmond at Microsoft’s campus the last couple days?). Anyway, yesterday Eran Hammer-Lahav, the primary author of the OAuth spec, released the first draft of XRDS-Simple format for public review.

I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned it here before, but Larry Halff (Ma.gnolia) and I have been recording a series of podcasts with a bunch of interesting folks on topics ranging from data portability to data interop and authorization patterns to API-driven web services. The intended audience of this podcast is really us, since it came out of lunches that Larry and I were having at Out the Door in downtown San Francisco. We realized that, while a lot of what we were talking about might be interesting to a wider audience, more importantly, starting a podcast of our conversations would…

With Mother's Day and a bunch of birthdays coming up I have been thinking about the whole gifting process and more specifically paper greeting cards. I think there is still something nice about getting a paper card since it is an artifact but I have found that more of the total inventory of greeting card play music. I find it kind of annoying but it is tough to find a good card anymore. It seems that someone must be buying greeting cards that play music because they seem to be taking up a majority of the Hallmark greeting card rack these days. But with all the social interactions that…

Now here is an interesting and innovative way to explore videos! Leveraging the CoolIris 3D browsing technology, PicLens is able to explore videos and photos via a wall of videos. PicLens allows users to search Flickr, Photobucket, Facebook and recently added the ability to search YouTube in this same 3D fashion - among others. So next time you get bored with traditional search metaphors for videos or images you might want to install PicLens and search in 3D. For more information on the CoolIris PicLens install the PicLens v.1.6.3 release which features YouTube video search and check out the…

Twitter, like anything, can be a little addictive as we look to reach out and communicate with all our friends and followers. Xefer has pulled together an interesting mashup which leverages Yahoo Pipes and Google Chart API to plot the usage of twitter of a specific user. So of course, I had to plug the somewhatfrank twitter id in and chart it. Give it a try here for your twitter username.

Xobni, the social email plugin for Outlook, which I highlighted previously has finally opened its doors as a public beta. I initially had some private beta invites that went very fast but I continued to receive inquiries. Now you can get your own copy of the latest Xobni product and test it out for yourself. These are also unconfirmed rumors that Microsoft is bidding to acquire Xobni so it would not be far fetched to think that Xobni could be integrated directly into Microsoft Outlook if the rumor becomes reality.

Photo of the Week: The new Nationals Park in Washington, D.C. hosted the Chicago Cubs last weekend I got a chance to see the "big headed" Presidents Race up close and took this shot. SOMEWHAT FRANK Weekly Tidbits: 5.4.2008 Microsoft drops bid to acquire Yahoo Wow, I thought this was a done deal. I guess I was wrong as Yahoo proved to have been able to flex its muscle and push off Microsoft as they felt the proposed amount was not enough. What's Next for Yahoo? Merging With AOL Still My PickCenterNetworks still thinks an AOL & Yahoo merger is the right move. Q: How in Holy Hell…

Image credit - understanding tjsize This is a guest post by one of our Social Media Ninja winners Social media is getting too popular - more and more effort is needed to get noticed there and make friends and fans. Beside being loyal, consistent, truthful, etc, etc, there is one proven technique to gain power within social media and your targeted community - that is “be everywhere at the same time.” Yep, sounds impossible to do, but still can be achieved if you know some tricks. These very tricks are described below (when I was starting, I used them unintentionally without much…

This post is inspired by Dave Gorman the UK comedian who is known in the UK for looking for other Dave Gormans amongst others and in America as the stats guy who occasionally appears on the Daily Show. Dave Gorman was recently featured in a TV show where he traveled across America only to make it far more fun he choose to travel without giving any money to “The Man”. “The Man” is the large faceless corporations that seem to be pandemic across the western world from Starbucks to Wal-Mart to IBM “The Man” is everywhere. If you haven’t seen the film or read…

We are here today with a distinguished guest that sits outside the realm of social media, but is rather a Political Science professor. (In fact, he was a professor of mine once upon a time). Before all of you think that I have lost my mind, let me explain further. Professor Patrick Regan is an expert in conflict management resolution and game theory, having authored several books including Organizing Societies for War, and the upcoming Sixteen Million One (excerpts found on his site). Thanks for joining us today, Professor.     1 – What do you think about social media in general?

Why haven’t you frontpaged yet? I want to go for a swim already. The short answer: no. The longer answer: So I’ve been out for most of the week on vacation. Which got me to thinking - can you really take a vacation from social media? I mean, how can you expose yourself to risking all those great tech/news nuggets like Wordpress 2.5 Release Candidate? Once you have social media in your system, it’s hard to step away from all those RSS feeds and social sites. Especially when most hotels have free wifi (in the USA anyway, thanks for pointing this out, Tim). They’re in on…

Photo by Laenulfean About a week ago I read a ProBlogger post called, "Have Blogs Killed Conventional Websites?". It was a Guest Post by Suzanne Falter-Barns. In this post Suzanne compares conventional websites to blogs as she tries to determine whether conventional websites are a dying breed. The post brought up a lot of recent anxiety for me. I remember battling with these same thoughts about 18 months ago when I started my first blog. Up until that point all I had were static websites. It didn’t take me long after I started to blog and add in other Social Media activities…

Reasoning for this week’s Friday Flickr Find: This is a great scene selection, but the colors on this fairly basic shot are wonderful. (photo by hyku)

Months after Duncan Watts published his article basically calling the Tipping Point an irrelevant concept, the debate still goes on about which theory is “correct”. Personally, I tend to agree with Joe on this one: A year later and a little more to the point, here’s what marketers can consider: Everyone has influence, but that influence has a couple of variables. –People have a quantity of influence: the maximum number of other people they can reach with a message. –People have a quality of influence: the amount of influence they exert over those that they reach. –People…

When I was a kid, many of our family vacations involved camping. During these trips, late at night (well, shortly after dark anyway) my Dad would crawl into the tent with my brother and I and tell us stories. Random characters doing random things would spill out of Dad’s imagination. Since then I’ve been fascinated by stories and storytelling. In 2000 I picked up a new book called “e ” that was told entirely in email exchange form. It’s brilliant and fun and took a different take on storytelling but made me start wondering why we’ve not seen much real…

10 Social Media Blunders that Can Destroy Your Brand | Sparkplug CEO Great list. How many have YOU been guilty of at some point or another? Come on now, you’re among friends… Tags: socialmedia, bloggerrelations, dailylinks Lego’s latest brick trick: a virtual world - washingtonpost.com I love to see LEGO Universe getting the attention it rightly deserves. Go LU! Tags: lego, legouniverse, dailylinks View all my bookmarks on Ma.gnolia

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Welcome to the May 2008 edition of Carnival of Leads to Making Money Online.The Carnival of Leads to Making Money Online is a monthly blog carnival consisting of posts about leads to making money online. The primary focus of this carnival is to help blog publishers learn about new and effective ways to monetize their site(s). It also includes posts about related items, like SEO, copywriting sales opportunities, entrepreneurial spirit and marketing programs.This issue of Carnival of Leads to Making Money Online received 136 total entries. Congratulations to the 32 authors selected to be…

Today is RSS Awareness Day. If you're not familiar with RSS, or Real Simple Syndication, then I recommend checking out the information on RSSDay.org. Also, thanks to Daniel at Daily Blog Tips for starting this great project.I use RSS to subscribe to blogs that I like to read every day. The main tools I use are Google Reader and e-mail subscriptions. If I want to follow a blog consistently, but not every day, I subscribe in Google. If I want to read every single post from a blog, then I subscribe via e-mail.I use RSS technology in other ways too, in particular through news aggregator sites…

Alltop.com has been described by many as an online magazine rack. It is a place where average Internet users can find hundreds of blogs, view the 5 most recent posts and preview the first 2 paragraphs of articles. I'd like to thank Alltop founder Guy Kawasaki for including this blog in the Social Media section of the site - Thanks Guy!Most of us who are active bloggers or social media participants use a feedreader to stay updated and informed. The average Joe/Jane Doe doesn't understand or utilize this technology though - only 5.4% of Internet users take advantage of RSS, according to Daily…

If you're a blogger and haven't joined Twitter, then you're missing out on a great opportunity to network, expand your brand and increase blog traffic.The best way to see what it's all about is to sign-up and see for yourself. Personally, I would recommend using a desktop air application, rather than the web stream. I use Twhirl. Pick 20-30 users to follow, and start reading and sharing. Feel free to follow me @jnbammer.Once you get the gist of how it works, then you will quickly see that Twitter has inspired a ton of applications and services to enhance your experience. Most of them are best…

Mixx.com is an up-and-coming community that is quickly establishing itself as a standout in the social media world. I recently wrote an article about it being a perfect place for newcomers to social media to get started: New to Social Media? Check Out Mixx.com.The more I delve into the site, and interact with people from the Mixx team, the more impressed I become. I still use other sites, like Digg and Propeller, but the majority of my quality time budgeted for this activity is being spent at Mixx.In addition to the benefits described in my earlier post, here's5 More Reasons Why Mixx Rocks…

In the rapidly shifting era of blogger and media relations, we can expect one thing to occur as we forge ahead, mistakes. It happens to the best and the worst of us.This isn’t a generic post on how not to make mistakes, or if you do, how to apologize, per se. This is an example of true transparency and public soul searching that will hopefully help and inspire PR practitioners, journalists, and bloggers to learn from the mistakes of others – and hopefully work together when unintentional or harmless mistakes are made.Let’s talk about transparency for a moment. You hear that word a lot…

As each day passes, we're presented with new information that documents the decline of traditional media in favor of online counterparts and new media competitors. It seems that newspapers are among the hardest hit with circulation and print advertising down - forcing layoffs across the country.The Newspaper Association of America (NAA) recently released a study showing newspaper Web sites attracted an average of about 66 million unique visitors in the first quarter, up about 12 percent over the same period a year ago.The problem for publishers has been turning that online traffic growth into…

Have you ever met someone so energetic, positive and incredibly smart - someone who exudes passion and someone who "gets it" in an inspirational way? I'm lucky to know one such person, Deirdre Breakenridge, and she has just published a new, must-read book, PR 2.0: New Media, New Tools, New Audiences I'm honored to have my ideas, philosophies, experiences, and vision shared throughout the book. I'm even more humbled to have been asked to contribute the foreword.PR 2.0, as I defined it many years ago, is the realization that the Web changed everything, inserting people equally into the process…

One of the more talked about companies at the Web 2.0 Expo is Zude, an interesting example of what's possible in the realm of social computing.The world maybe doesn't need another social network, but what we sure could use is a platform that allows us to aggregate social elements from all over the web into one place - how we want, when we want.Zude officially announced in beta and allows users to grab elements from any social networking site and integrate them into their own Zude page. It makes it easy for you to create, consolidate, communicate, and share "your" Web.This concept takes the…

Every now and again a reporter or blogger decides to shake up the PR industry by showcasing how we FAIL, flop, or simply when we do things wrong. Some do so out of anger, others are genuine in their desire to help, while some are simply tired and do so out of spite.This time around however, Marshall Kirkpatrick of ReadWriteWeb has started a conversation that proactively helps PR and communications professionals learn how to more effectively work with influential writers for future stories and maybe, just maybe, forge and cultivate ongoing relationships. In his post, “Five Wrong Ways to…

As expected, we recently sold out the Bazaarvoice Social Commerce Summit. When we announced the summit we limited attendance to 200 and we had more than enough interest to fill that limit. If you were not able to get in, we will be posting blog entries on some of the takeaways from the conference, and clients will have access to many of the presentations after the event. We may expand the size of the event next year, but not by much. In our experience, smaller events provide much better sharing of best practices and networking. We're very excited about the summit as it is the first time…

After Omniture's acquisition of Offermatica late last year, I made a note to catch up with Chris Duskin, who is now part of the Test&Target team at Omniture.  Testing, optimization, and targeting solutions have come a long way since my first experiences with Offermatica, Optimost, and others, so I wanted to tap Chris for ideas on how to apply these advanced technologies to the task of optimizing social commerce and social influence marketing.  I've spoken with a number of customers and prospects about their plans to invest in this area, so I hope this interview is…

A good friend and ex-Dell colleague (and Bazaarvoice client) passed away on Friday, April 25, 2008, after a courageous and inspiring battle with brain cancer. I want to celebrate and share the piece of his life I knew, and the words of wisdom he left for all of us. Two months after I joined Dell in March 1999, a curly-haired Harvard grad moved into the cube next door. Over the next seven years Rich and I worked together to help build Dell’s consumer eBusiness to a $3.5B business, and then on Dell’s CRM and segmentation strategy (he worked on corporate strategy while I worked in…

Austin, TX is the Live Music Capital of the World. So, it's fitting we bring live music to the first annual Bazaarvoice Social Commerce Summit! One of the nation’s hottest up-and-coming bands, the Band of Heathens, will be providing their authentic Austin brand of Country, Blues, and Soul music at the Bazaarvoice Social Commerce Summit, in May.  In 2007, the Band of Heathens was named Best New Band at the Austin Music Awards, no small feat for a band in the Live Music Capital of the World.  When you see them live, you will see why.  The Band of Heathens’ music…

With the explosive growth of international markets, Bazaarvoice has expanded the Client Services team overseas starting with their first Community Manager, focused on the needs of its UK and European clients. Anna Skaya, our International Community Manager, gives us a quick look into the growing UK online community. by Anna Skaya, International Community Manager Londoners are huge talkers! On the mobile, at the tube stations, or in queue at the loo, there is a constant exchange of information on every level and in every direction. Plus – with the reputation of being the most…

Was very glad to finally catch up with Brian Shields of KRON4 at the Web 2.0 Expo. Brian is doing some great work over there, bringing new media and social media to a traditional media company.

While I was overly transparent in dealing with my health crisis and fears of impending doom, I have not been talking about it as much lately. I did not intend it to become the primary conversation I was having with everyone, but it did. I just really wanted to express myself and get [...]

cgm: Ad-Tech Diarist: Ten Questions on the \”Art of Conversation\” Great post for everyone to read when thinking about what it means to engage in conversations as a marketer. (tags: blog conversation marketing social socialmedia womma conversationalmarketing adtech) Web 2.0 Expo Preview: Web 2.0 Isn\’t Just About The Apps — web 2.0 — InformationWeek Good piece from Information Week [...]

How this blog saved my life and saved me $100,000 | Rational rants | ZDNet.com Really very happy to hear that our friend Mitch Ratcliffe is no longer suffering through severe back pain and that he found a medical trial by publishing his needs to the market. This is a must read story… Congratulations [...]

Today's Hindustan Times Tech4U page focuses on "What Blogging Did Next" and features 2 main pieces on the subject. In the first piece, titled Hum Blog, Priyanka Sachar of Delhi Bloggers Bloc talks about the blogging scene in general and Delhi in particular, online and offline. The second piece, written by me talks about Twitter. You can find the newspaper version here. My longer, unedited version, is below. Choose whichever, but do leave your thoughts: “Mirror, mirror on the wall who is the most viral of them all?” I asked. “Twitter, O dear sir!” answered the magic mirror without…

"Mango Shake Idhar Hai, Aapkaa Dhyaan Kidhar Hai?" teased at least two of the near identical carts I passed by yesterday, driving back from the C.A.'s office. I asked my driver to reverse the vehicle and clicked these pictures. There were four of these carts - 3 parked next to each other and 1 just a bit away - in all their kitsch glory, tempting summer hit pedestrians. Makes me think why can't the friendly neighborhood kirana stones similarly come together under a common brand, to meet the threat posed by organised retail? Each keeps their sales and profits, but contributes to a common…

We continue in our business communication learnings series. I am getting great feedback from many of my younger friends and would try and write specifically for them more often. In this post, I am taking up "Don't presume, ask instead." “I thought!” is the commonest and potentially the deadliest excuse that anyone can use to explain a task gone wrong. I would rather look stupid, but I would ask and ask again, than presume when I take a decision. Don’t confuse this with strategic risk taking kind of “I thought” but particularly when carrying out a task and specifically when it is an…

We continue in our business communication learnings series. In this post, I am taking up "Close the loop". Let me try and share a simple example. I am sure you have experienced it yourself: Our client, Ram (fictitious name), calls me seeking inputs from a recent study. He needs these for a presentation scheduled for tomorrow that he is preparing. I am not at work but call up my colleague Rekha (fictitious name) and request her to send Ram the required inputs. Rekha puts together a summary document, attaches the study and emails these to Ram.She gets busy with piles of other work that she has…

I have, over the last week or so, been sharing some of my business (added later) communication learnings with a younger colleague. These sound very simple, but aren't, and can make all the difference as I found, sometimes after having paid the price for overlooking. Say more in less. Close the loop. Don't presume, ask instead. Make things idiot proof. Your tone will decide the results. In this post, I am taking up "Say more in less" and will try and complete the entire series in this week. Hope this helps some of my other younger readers. There are several different mistakes that all of us…

I’m late on chiming in on this one, but with a reason. I had to pinch myself first, then wait to see if I was getting punk’d. As many blogs have stated, the rumor that Microsoft is pursuing Facebook is, well, just a rumor. Still, things like these don’t just pop up randomly (very often) without some credibility, especially when it makes sense as a ploy to pressure Yahoo. With that said, I still feel the need to point out why this won’t work. Call it abuse of the hypothetical, but blogs are made to explore the possibilities. Many, perhaps most, Facebook users do not…

I was talking to a friend the other day who was telling me about this girl he met at a coffee shop.  She noticed that he had the same laptop as she did and sparked a conversation.  They talked for an hour before she had to go. “Did you get her number?” I asked. “No, but I got her Twitter.  That’s even better!” he replied. Wow.  What a world we live in. (more…)

As much as I have enjoyed Digg over the years, it is officially no longer relevant as a social news site.  The concept that social “media” can be pictures, videos, podcasts, or articles is great, but what I witnessed tonight was both enjoyable and sad. (more…)

In the real world, we pick our friends based upon certain traits and conditions.  We want people we can like who have shared interests and who have a certain proximity to us.  The Internet has changed the proximity aspect of friendship, but we still need to be able to interact with our friends in some way to truly be friends. In social media, “friendship” is more of a way to get votes for your submissions than to interact with others.  There are certainly those who make real friends through social media.  Some of the people I interact with on a daily basis were people I met on…

It’s been nearly a year now, but when Kevin Rose boldly announced that “you’ve made it clear” and “If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying,” in regards to the the HD-DVD key that was published everywhere, Digg was on top of the social media world with a true opportunity to be the site “for the people.”  While the move to ignore a cease and desist declaration was a bit less bold than most understood at the time (it was everywhere at that point), it was still a public relations goldmine that Digg could have very easily parlayed…

Yesterday we got the news that our blog is now included in Guy Kawasaki’s new adventure on the internet called Alltop. And now you’re asking yourself, what is Alltop? We help you explore your passions by collecting stories from “all the top” sites on the web. We’ve grouped these collections — ”aggregations” — into individual Alltop sites based on topics such as environment, photography, science, celebrity gossip, fashion, gaming, sports, politics, automobiles, and Macintosh. At each Alltop site, we display the latest five stories from thirty or more sites on a single…

Geno and I are in Miami through the end of the week or WOMMA’s WOMM-U. I’ll do my best to update the blog and report in on the presentations I hear. Geno is teaching 6 “classes” in the next two days so I’m sure his time will be a little more limited. You can also follow our updates on Twitter - @spike_jones and @genochurch. Also, I set up a hashtag for the event. More to come! PS - WOMMA has a live video and live blog you can follow, too.

Examples of this come to us today via Taylor Vandiver via Team Forty: Create. Organize. Share. Connect. (blist) Experience. Share. Connect. (geotract) Connect. Share. Live. (KIJIG) Create. Share. Connect. (Factory Joe) Discover. Share. Connect. Discuss. (InfoAddict) Play. Share. Connect. (PSC Site) Express. Share. Connect. Enjoy. (Gapuchi) Share. Connect. Grow. Act. (Get Real) Remember. Share. Connect. (Memoloop) Watch. Listen. Share. Connect. (Ruckus Network) Create. Share. Discover. Connect. (Fraxi) Create. Connect. Share. (MateCube) Share. Learn. Connect. Make a Difference. (Care2)…

Well folks, time just keeps rolling by.  You know how I know that?  It’s that time again. That time when we take Fred Reichheld’s advice to engage the people we touch to help us grow and continually improve. We are asking you (yes, YOU!) “The Ultimate Question.” We do this annually, in an ongoing effort to put our best foot forward. So please take a moment to click on this link and take our very brief, anonymous survey. If you received this link in the email, then you won’t need to take the survey via the blog… it’s all the same survey! Thanks again…

I’m a dog person. And one of my dogs is an 8-year old, 100-pound Chocolate Lab very appropriately named Mud. He didn’t exactly get the brains of the litter, but I love him nonetheless. In fact, I think I’ve learned some things from ol’ Mud that I can apply to the marketing world: Always be happy to see your customers. Whenever I come home, there he is – tail wagging, tongue hanging out, tap-dancing with excitement. He doesn’t know what kind of day I’ve had or if I’m in a good mood or bad. But there’s no hidden agenda. He’s ready to hang out. To listen. To just let me…

tags: personal focus transition flow etiquette friendship nyc time inward outward microformats I attended the Diggnation party at Mighty tonight. Having driven yet not had dinner, did not partake of the drinks offered. Earlier I had tended to a few appointments and the Data Portability meetup on rel="me" - Chris Saad had invited me to attend and help with Q&A. A number of things happened over the course of the evening which made me think. Most of them were events occuring in a longer sequence, pieces that helped complete thoughts in progress. I won't go into details but…

tags: sxsw sxsw2008 sxswi sxswi2008 sxswtip pack whattopack packinglist I've seen numerous people twitter wondering what to pack for SXSW today. Per my communication protocols, I'm blogging my answer. Note: I'm basing this purely on my personal packing list, so if you're a girl, or wear something other than black, you may want to check other suggested packing lists as well First, you must unpack what you have packed. If you are one of those urban superheroes that walk around with useful gadgets like swiss army knives (or any kind of knives), and allen wrenches (or anything…

2/28-3/1 Future of Web Apps - 2008 - Miami (u, p)

tags: humaninterface hi userinterface ui design humaninterfacedesign laws rules hypothesis hypotheses twitter im email blogging users email efail A year ago I published Three Hypotheses of Human Interface Design which in short provided some analysis that demonstrated that the simpler and faster a user interface is, the easier it is to use. The response has been quite amazing, with over a hundred blog posts and comments across various sites (Digg, Reddit etc.) I was particularly humbled that Ev Williams incorporated a summary of the three hypotheses in a few of his talks last year: Web 2.0…