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Collaborative Tech conference in Cleveland

2008-05-07T17:30:00.001-04:00

Tomorrow I’m off to CollabTech’08 - a conference being held at CASE about collaborative technologies on campus. It promises to have talks about the very things I've been mentioning on this blog; OpenID, 2D Codes, Wikis & blogs.

All this in my own backyard.

So if you’re going, be sure to say “Hi”. If you can’t make it I’ll be twittering (#collabtech08) and perhaps sharing stuff on Evernote, WiFi permitting.

Technorati tags: collabtech, conference, cleveland, case, technology, #collabtech08

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Monday Links - 2008-05-05

2008-05-05T11:05:00.001-04:00

Collaboration Technology - Conference I'm attending (along with some Optiem colleagues) at CASE this week
Stop using Ajax! - Opera Developer Community
twistori - another twitter application showing the type of information you can gleam from this
GROU.PS :: connects obsessively! - via Warren. Might have to try this out.
Xobni: Email organization, search, and navigation for your Outlook inbox - via Jenn
I Love Typography: The Rather Difficult Font Game: The Hall of Fame
brightkite.com - most requested invite I saw last week on twitter
Howcast - Shows You How - nice video vertical

Technorati tags: video, conference, collabtech08, twitter, outlook, social networks

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Monday Links - 2008-04-28

2008-04-28T00:44:00.001-04:00

Fire Eagle & Plazes talk to each other - More networks will be doing this
ClaimID enhanced with RecognitionAUTH
Spime search - via Findability.org
Spock on Reuters - the people search engine continues TV appearences
Opera browser to get its own web developer tool - via CSS3.info
Use twitter to track packages - via TwitterThoughts

Technorati tags: claimid, opera, spime, spock, search, development, twitter

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So that was Earth Day. Now what?

2008-04-28T00:03:00.001-04:00

So it was Earth Day on April 22nd and it seemed everywhere had some kind of “green” theme. Most of the major TV networks turned their logos green or had eco-friendly programming for the week, and some sites dedicated their home pages to green issues, such as our client USTelecom. But as we look forward to next year you may be asking yourself “what can I do in the meantime”?

Well, a fair bit if you spend some time online.

First things first, go and join Edenbee. This is a social network about lowering your carbon footprint and combating climate change. You can check out my Edenbee profile and join to get tips on everything from hybrids to recycling.

Flock is my favorite browser, but they now have an eco-edition browser, which will donate 10% of its search proceeds to a green charity of choice, as voted by the users at the end of the year.

You could also keep in touch with all things environmental at Treehugger - a site dedicated to green issues.

If you are looking at a new hosting partner in 2008 you could search out one of the many “green” hosting companies such as GoGreenHosting.

Technorati tags: earth day, green, eco-friendly, edenbee, flock, treehugger, ustelecom

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Day of .NET

2008-04-25T13:31:00.001-04:00

Thanks to Linda for forwarding this. Cleveland is taking part of the "Day of .NET" and details can be found over at http://clevelanddodn.org/. Subjects to covered are Silverlight, Semantic Web and Sharepoint. Might be worth a look.

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Monday Links - 2008-04-21

2008-04-21T15:45:00.001-04:00

http://www.twitterlocal.net/ - see who's twittering around you
Crawling HTML forms the Google way
Skype offers $9.95 plan - unlimited international calling for under $10
ISP error could have hackers hijack the web - maybe
New art from old video - (love the little things like @ 1:40)
Social Graph videos - via O'Reilly Radar

Technorati tags: twitter, seo, google, forms, skype, dance, video, social graph

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Forging your own twitter parlance...

2008-04-21T01:05:00.002-04:00

The more I use twitter the more I find myself changing the way I communicate within it’s 140 character limit.

First of all I dropped capitalization, just for the sake of speed. Spelling is one of those things that gets forgiven by everyone due to the nature of the medium I think, pretty much like text messages on a mobile device. Same goes 4 using nmbrs and abbr 2 shrtn msgs.

As twitter is part life-streaming, activities such as what you are listening to, eating, watching, or doing all come into play. For listening I'm now using the prefix “ipod=” which seems to fit and putting the track or album name in quotations seems to be an accepted way to separate it from the artist.

e.g. ipod=“blue moon station” by solar fields

So why should you be interested in this? Well, I'm not the only person who is re-thinking the way they communicate. Others are too and there are sites and services springing around twitter up to accommodate this.

Some I’ve noticed others using and coming to the fore are:

OH: = overheard. You can see this going on over at http://overheard.it/
FAIL = Tantek was the first person I saw use this to highlight something not working in some sense or another
Hashtags - by placing a hash or # in front of a word, this can act like a tag within your twitter stream I used this method of tagging tweets at #sxsw this year

There are also a number of blogs devoted to twitter. One of the new kids on the block is Twitter Thoughts by Roger Harris.

Any of these can used to get a look at and track what's going on around you, but unless you participate you'll never fully appreciate the new conversations. And that could be an EPIC FAIL.

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Places to talk to your clients/customers...

2008-04-16T14:58:00.001-04:00

So, say you’re a company that provides products or services to people. You've heard this rumor that people talk about you or your products behind you're back on the Internet. Are you being paranoid?

Well, the short answer is NO! And it's not a rumor.

Consumers at every level are using the Internet more and more to form, and voice, opinions on products, services and even the companies that provide them. This can have positive and negative effects on both your online and off line standing/sales. Best (or worst) example is DellHell.

One solution is to implement a blog as a communication channel, but for some companies this could too difficult for a multitude of internal reasons. Another option is to use a site like UserVoice which comes out of private beta on Friday.

UserVoice lets you set up your own sub-domain, control the C-Name and upload your logo - in the future uploading your own CSS too.

This is where you can garner feedback as well as float new ideas out to your consumers.

They also offer a widget that you can put on your site that ties into your page.

Users can suggest ideas or vote on ones floated by you or other customers. UserVoice also makes your interest a little more transparent by allowing you to show “official responses” and if ideas do get picked up, you can show the progress of them.

Another good thing is this is crawled by the search engines, though there are a few tweaks I would like to see on the SEO front.

Some people already using this service are RetailMeNot.com (see suggestions link at the bottom of their page) and CushyCMS.com (after signing in).

UserVoice fits right in to the way you (companies) should be looking at doing business online and is a great component in everyone’s online reputation management.

Technorati tags: uservoice, feedback, customers, reputation, online reputation management

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Monday Links - 2008-04-14

2008-04-14T10:04:00.001-04:00

Foodio54.com - restaurant finder
SmartyPig: Savings account and social network.
Tweets - Overheard.it - see everything OH from twitter
Can mobile phones end poverty? - via Warren Ellis
DropJack, a social news network - like Digg, but different

Technorati tags: twitter, money, savings, mobile, food

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Naked day and other stuff...

2008-04-09T09:31:00.001-04:00

Happy CSS Naked Day!

It kinda crept up on me this year, hence not doing it on my blog or freelance web design site, though it still brings traffic to DMWebsites from last year. Not sure if it’s just the word naked though ;-)

Other news today, Flickr has now started showing videos people have been uploading. I like the way you can play the thumbnails and how they have kept the whole Flickr esthetic rather than going all YouTube. Flock will have to do some catching up as their bar doesn’t recognise the videos yet.

Finally two twitter realted items:

TwitterJammers is all about those people that tweet too much. All the usual names are there - no danger of mine appearing anytime soon.
TweetClouds is a site that makes a tag cloud from your tweets. #sxsw was obviously something I went mad over - hence the @warrenellis fatwah.

Technorati tags: flickr, video, twitter, "css naked day", sxswi2008

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Monday Links (on Tuesday) - 2008-04-01

2008-04-01T20:02:00.001-04:00

No April Fools here :-)

Will Wright and Brian Eno - FORA.tv
Find Your Friends - Flickr shakes hands with Gmail, Yahoo! etc.
Free Stock Photos at freerangestock.com - Totally Free Stock Photography and Textures!
Ext JS Ext.ux.YoutubePlayer
Search Patterns - via Findability.org

Technorati tags: stockphotos, flickr, patterns, design, youtube, api

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Monday links - 2008-03-24

2008-03-24T12:01:00.001-04:00

As I lost the original post (will be sending a report to those involved) here's some other links:

CSS Framework; complete with Visio, Fireworks, and Photoshop templates
Art from email spam - via Julie
South Park now FREE - via Clyde
The danger of using stock video, or anything in this connected world.
Twitter Color Wars

Technorati tags: css, framework, spam, south park, twitter

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Netscape users can "Flock" to a new browser...

2008-03-21T01:17:00.001-04:00

As seen on the official Netscape blog - Netscape 8 users can migrate to the new Flock browser. As development and support ended for Netscape browsers on March 1st, users will be presented with a chance to move over to Flock with an update to be released soon. Now I'm a big fan of Flock (I'm using it to write & post this) but I wonder why they didn't go with Firefox given the history. Or maybe that's the reason.

Technorati tags: browser, flock, netscape

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Could this make the iPhone really useful?

2008-03-21T01:16:00.001-04:00

Embedded Video

I've mentioned shotcodes and qrcodes before, but I've just come across something that could kick their adoption into high gear.

iMatrix is a free app that runs on the iPhone. With this app you can use the iPhones camera to capture different types of codes and use them in a variety of ways. Now these codes have been around for sometime and their adoption in Japan, thanks in part to DoCoMo, is fairly widespread but here in the USA the adoption is nearly zero.

Well it seems that iMatrix may change that. iPhones have had a dramtic adoption rate, with the mobile version of Safari now topping the chartsimatrix,shotcode,qrcode,mobile,. By turning the iPhone into a capture and display device for these codes it really opens the opportunites.

Now I just have to find someone with an iPhone to test it on. Yes I'm looking at you Clyde & Brent.

Technorati tags: qrcode, shotcode, 2dcode, iphone, imatrix, mobile, video

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A shift in industry communication?

2008-03-18T17:42:00.001-04:00

I’ve noticed a change in they way I’ve been communicating with people in my extended community online.

Now this is not a trend I’m seeing with everyone online or that would spread to the general populous ant time soon, but it is definitely spreading to those that build and use the web on a day-to-day basis.

Personal web pages have given way to the mighty blog, though social networks are claiming a little of that back now, and video use seems to be on the rise with sites such as Y!Live, DialedIn etc. though it still seems a little too much like a fad.

Daily communications are the things that I have seen the most change in and the delivery methods are in a state of flux.

Tweet!

I’ve mentioned my initial reception to twitter before, but since adopting Snitter I find myself using it more and more. I’ve tried organizing lunch meetings through it which didn’t go to well (eh, Joe) and ended up using the phone. So for long-term planning (are you going to XYZ next week?) and general communication I find Twitter does fine. Also the fact that this is easily used with portable devices, like mobile phones, only adds to it's adoption.

IM

I was a bit of a hold-out on IM initially too (see a pattern?) but internally it proved a very good method of communicating between the coders & designers here. Since moving to different digs the use has dropped off as none of the account teams seem to use it that much. I still keep it open & have found Trillian a great tool for managing the different connections including IRC.

Email=EFAIL

This (for me) originated from a tweet I saw by Tantek Çelik. He’s since backed it up by a blog post expanding his view on this. Now I don’t agree with everything put forward there, but as with everything, it’s a reaction to how you use the tools or how they are used at you.

This sparked me to view Merlin Manns’ Inbox Zero video. It’s well worth watching and since trying the method out today, seems very effective.

Now I don’t think we’ll ever be free of email or that we’ll be doing important client communication via Twitter, but I do think as more of these alternatives seep into every day adoption within companies and the space where we do business continues to shrink - we’ll see email’s sense of immediacy erode and more general discussion moving over to a new medium.

Technorati tags: communication, twitter, email=efail, im, web, social networks

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Monday links - 2008-03-17

2008-03-17T13:54:00.001-04:00

After missing a week due to SXSW I should be back to regular postings.

shifd lets you store notes across multiple devices - via LN
music piracy surcharge - wether you illegally download music or not.
webkit now 92/100 on Acid3 test - via CSS3.info
New web site for USTelecom - [optiem built it]
SXSW Podcasts, for those who didn't get to RAWK

Technorati tags: sxsw, ustelecom, acid3 test, music

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SXSWi gripe - my problem with the day planner...

2008-03-10T10:52:00.001-04:00

SXSW is going great. They have done a better job, IMHO, with collecting the panels and using more of the center. There seems to less bottlenecks this year. My one gripe is with the day planner (photo to be added).

They went to all the trouble of matching the colors used by the center to identify the levels and replicate them in print. If you're on level 3 then all the signage is purple. Unfortunately, in the planner, level 4 is colored purple, level 3 (planner) is green.

Also in the planner the order goes level1, level 4, level 3. What sense is that? Just sayin'.

So endeth my old man useless grumble ;-)

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SXSWi 2008 - Day One

2008-03-08T10:48:00.001-05:00

Travel.

That's pretty much what we did for Day One. Leaving CLE in the morning, just in time before a massive blizzard hit. The flight was a little bumpy but pretty uneventful.

Landed, checked-in to the hotel and then on to registration. It was still the long lines from last year but seemed to move a lot quicker and we were in & out in less than 30 minutes. Ditched all the "junk" in the bag and started to mingle. We passed on the "How to RAWK" panel and decided to familiarize ourselves with the layout of the Convention Center and surrounding area again.

This year they seem to be using a lot more of the site but you'll still have to walk a lot if you're in different sections.

We kept checking back in Cleveland on the state of the weather. Our two co-workers, Clyde & Mark, were supposed to be joining us later but as the snow increased it became apparent they may not make it in. Then 10.30pm I heard from Clyde they'd cancelled the flight and they couldn't get out until Sunday so, basically, they'd miss most of the event and decided not to come at all. So now it's just Paul & I.

Day two is when the fun really starts.

Technorati tags: sxsw, sxswi2008, travel, sxsw2008, day1

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Behold IE8!

2008-03-05T17:42:00.001-05:00

So on Tuesday I came into the office to an email from Brent announcing Microsoft’s u-turn on IE8’s default behavior. Great news for us developer types as that now means that we wouldn’t have to start using ‹meta› tags to force IE8 to act, well, like IE8.

Today, at MIX’08, Microsoft unveiled IE8. Thanks to Jeremy Keith & Jonathan Snook’s tweets I got the latest on webslices and the link to download the beta—which I promptly did.

Now if you are running Vista it seems IE8 installs pretty quickly. I, on the other hand, run XP Pro and had to install a couple of “critical” things from Microsoft and then do two restarts. Some things never change.

After that IE8 runs pretty nicely. It doesn't look a lot different from the current IE7, but I assume that may change a little nearer launch. A couple of things that are different are the “emulate IE7” button (which requires the browser to restart) and a developer tools button which launches a new window with built-in tools akin to Pederick’s web developer toolbar or Hewitt’s Firebug add-on.

I’m going to be trying it out over the coming weekend and hopefully getting some more insights at SXSW.

Technorati tags: ie8, microsoft, browser, beta

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Synchronicity in Cleveland...

2008-02-29T00:48:00.001-05:00

Have you ever had that feeling that things are just slotting into place around you?

Yesterday I finished reading “Meatball Sundae”, the new book by Seth Godin. It’s a small book in which Mr. Godin lays out why forcing "meatballs" (things we need) with "sundaes" (new marketing methods) don't work. He uses various examples, hopping between Wedgewood in the 1800’s up to his own Squidoo in the present day and outlines 14 trends that could help.

It was a good book, most of the trends and pitfalls I was aware of and been educating our clients about for a little while, but there are also some new spins in there that sparked the occasional “ah-ha” moment.

Today I crashed the Web Association lunch panel entitled “B2B and the Digital Transformation” with our very own Megan Hauer as moderator. As I sat there listening to the panel describe their methods they are trying to get to clients in the B2B market one thing struck me.

All of them mentioned some of the very things that Godin touched on his book:

proving to upper management
treating each customer as an individual
include online and "traditional" marketing in the same budget
winning small battles

These were guys seeing this transformation happen for themselves and got it. I also saw nods around the room and also some head shaking. The head-shakers were in the minority, but they are the ones that Godin is going for in his book.

Things are changing and people (management) are going to have to accept that you will have to start changing the way your company works to make use of this new marketing, because just adding some web2.0 topping isn't going to cut it.

2008 is definitely shaping up to be an exciting year.

Technorati tags: “meatball sundae”, marketing, "seth godin"

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Google aquires GrandCentral...

2008-02-26T12:04:00.001-05:00

Google has now acquired GrandCentral and will be offering the functionality free with other Google online apps. GrandCentral lets you have a single number that combines all your other numbers (mobile, home, & work). So you can give your GrandCentral number out and then screen calls or use it to listen to voice mail online, record calls and import your address book. You can also set when or for whom a certain number will be called. It was extremely easy to setup and the call to verify the account happened less than a second after I clicked "go" on the web site. GrandCentral also has a mobile component and with Google's Android this could be a great integration. Now I've set this up I'll be kicking the tires and see how best this suits me.

Technorati tags: google, phone, grandcentral, organize

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Monday Links - 2008-02-25

2008-02-25T15:38:00.001-05:00

Technorati tags: spam, gmail, ie8, video, divx, funding, mobile

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Flock1.1 beta

2008-02-20T13:43:00.001-05:00

Some of the things I'm loving about the new Flock 1.1 beta:

Flock Blog Plus add-on is now workable again (belated congrats to mctones on his new arrival)
Integrated Gmail & Yahoo! mail
Cleaner "My World" page - I never used this before but might give it a go
Seems a lot faster on start-up

Technorati tags: flock, flock1.1, beta, add-ons

Monday Links - 2008-02-19

2008-02-19T14:31:00.001-05:00

Farecast.com - Using data from reservation systems or airlines to predict the best price
Pew Internet: Online Shopping - report on online shopping habits
LIVE - already played out?
HD is no more - All hail Blu-Ray
The street as platform - excellent read via William Gibson

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Pownce is now free for all...

2008-02-15T11:00:00.001-05:00

Pownce has been in "web2.0 invite-only beta" for a little while now and yesterday opened it's doors to one and all - Sharing the love on Valentines day.

And that's a big part of Pownce, sharing. More than just another IM/social network, this lets you share events, links, files and messages. You can do this either on your page or through the slick little app that runs on AIR

One of the reasons I haven't used this much since being part of the invite-only beta was a lot of the people on there I see in different places online anyway.

With this public launch though you can also connect friends from other networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr as well as the usual online email clients that are already on the system. I did try this today (sorry for the mass requests) and Pownce does a pretty good job of finding matches within it's system but when I tried to cancel an invite (who knew two Dave Woods would look very similar) I got an error message.

There is also a Pro package which will cancel advertisements, though I haven't seen any to date on the free version, send up to 100Mb files and design custom themes.

One of the other nice things is the aggregation of other social networks, IM, and websites you can display on your page, making Pownce another place you can start to manage your online presence.

Hopefully I will be using this a little more now it's truly open.

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