Nontrivial Exercises

Twitter Spam

I suppose it has to come, but it surprises me just a bit. Twitterspam.

I’ve had about 5 new followers on Twitter in the last couple of days who are doing nothing more than pimping their products - health supplements, get-rich-on-the-web programs, etc. I call it Twitterspam.

I suppose it makes marketing sense - Twitter is an easy way to get your “message” out to potentially a lot of people. It’s nice that one doesn’t have to follow the Twitterspamers so we don’t really have to see their updates, but I guess I’m just a little disappointed that spam has found its way into the reaches of an app like Twitter.

Maybe if we ignore them they will go away?

Tags: twitter, spam, twitterspam

Twitter API as the Social Presence Standard?

Dave Winer yesterday in his Status of the Platform, 2007 edition, suggests that the Twitter API may be a great standard we should clone for other apps.

Much as RSS 2.0 was a format used to communicate between various UserLand products that turned into a lingua franca for an industry, the Twitter API may end up having significance outside the confines of the startup that’s launching it.

Perhaps the Twitter API - or the Twitter platform itself - could be the model for a “social presence” primitive that could be used for all apps that want to integrate presence information, as I opined yesterday.

As Dave also suggests, it sounds like a good subject for a BarCamp …

Tags: twitter, api, social networks, barcamp

Facebook Extravaganza and Social Network Progression

Facebook is becoming the newest social network place-to-be-seen. The recent opening up of their API to provide various types of apps has a lot to do with the current popularity. Robert Scoble has a great list of his favorite Facebook apps - as compared to the list of the TechCrunch interns, who approach things from a 20-something perspective.

I’m chronologically in-between the interns’ twenty-something and Robert’s forty-something perspective, but I do like almost all the apps on Robert’s list better - and those that I haven’t tried yet I’d be interested in doing so.

The problem Facebook presents us with now is that it’s yet another social platform that vies for our attention. Twitter, Pownce, Jaiku also compete for one’s online social allegiance, and if you’re one to follow the herd or are easily distracted by shiny objects (and their online counterpart of new web services), then you’ll find yourself quickly overwhelmed by all the social networking you’ve suddenly become obligated to do.

I believe the next progressive step we need to make in the social network space is a way for them to easily work together. We have figured out how to connect people easily around specific themes, interests, or causes and create an online community. We can enrich each other’s lives by finding new and easier and cooler ways to connect with other people and get to know.

The next step should be to connect the networks.

Example. We now have this idea of “social presence” and status. Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce and Facebook all provide a system to update people about what you’re doing. However, I want to be able to choose which platform I use for my “social presence” and then have that update to any other platform I use.

All of this is somewhat hackable today (Facebook can update Twitter, Twitter can’t update Facebook without a lot of hackery). But it is not easy or intuitive.

Could we define a set of meta-actions that we apply to social networking and then create standards around these? Let’s start with “social presence” and define an open API with a set of primitives for how any app could update another one with “presence” information.

I bet smarter people than I could do this, and I think we need to in order to make social networks truly usable.

BTW, you can find me on Twitter and on Facebook, but not on Pownce, Jaiku or MySpace.

Tags: facebook, social networks, twitter

Corporate Blogging Behind the Firewall - Looking for Best Practices

The company I work for (which I make a reasonable effort to not mention on this blog, but which isn’t necessarily a dark secret) has begun to support internal employee blogs. By “support” I mean “provide a means to make happen”, but not “encourage by implementing a simple yet effective architecture familiar to most bloggers.”

My company is a telecommunications and networking infrastructure provider, and we have a lot of intellectual property that we must maintain. We’re struggling to figure out how to create cutting edge technology and freely participate in the technology marketplace of today, which includes openness, direct communication, collaboration, user-generated content etc. etc. - while still protecting our IP (intellectual property).

So we’ve taken a small step by implementing something more like a web forum system tweaked up to look like a blog. It supports real html, comments and attachments. However, it’s an SSL-encrypted webpage behind our firewall, there’s no RSS and the internal URL’s look like a mashup of misspelled Russian words and symbols that are at least 20 characters long.

In short, it’s extremely inconvenient for others to access the content - you have to have a specific URL of the employee blogs page. In stead of RSS, the system offers an email subscription, which is certainly better than nothing.

I understand why our company isn’t allowing externally-visible employee blogs, and can understand the security concerns even behind the firewall - at least to a point. But the restrictions significantly hinder the power of a blog - easily accessible, open posting API (e.g. Wordpress or Moveable Type) and syndication.

I’d like to offer my very humble input to our IS team but would like to seek others input about the best practices for setting up blogs behind the firewall. For example:

• are there some proven ways to implement RSS with both authorization and encryption?
• what blogging platforms are most conducive to a behind-the-firewall application?
• how have other companies developed an internal blogging policy (I’m not even considering external blogging policies at this point) where there is a lot of IP discussion involved, even internally?

If anyone has input on this topic I’d love to hear it! Thanks.

My Take on Google Calendar - Give Me 30Boxes

As you probably have seen, Google got into the web2.0–ish calendar game this week with the appropriately yet blandly named Google Calendar. I thought I would give it a look and throw my input into the discussion by specifically comparing it to 30Boxes as I performed a common calendar task – creating a set of events and then sharing them with a group. The bottom line for me – Google Calendar may win over a lot of people just because it’s Google, but 30Boxes (30B) is by far the better solution.

First, a disclaimer: I use Outlook almost exclusively for my calendar needs, since I utilize a Windows platform for work. I’m also using the Outlook 2007 beta, which has some truly significant improvements over Outlook 2003, one of which is support for icalendar (webcal://…) online calendars. So, I consider myself a power-user when it comes to calendars, but my scope is fairly limited to Outlook.

I thought I would put Google Calendar to the test today with the schedule of my son’s t-ball team that I coach. I entered each of the games, opponents, locations, and who was responsible for bringing the snack (the most important part of the game when you’re 6) into a new calendar quite easily.

Continue reading ‘My Take on Google Calendar - Give Me 30Boxes’

Being Purposeful About Your Privacy - Part 2

In my previous post with this title, I mentioned how I had thought through the way I had setup my interactions on the Internet in 4 distinct ways, with varying degrees of privacy. How much you share of yourself when on-line is something you must consciously and purposefully decide, or risk letting someone else decide it for you, e.g. via default settings in various applications you use.

I want to explain the 4 different profiles, or faces, that I have on the Internet and suggest that these are reasonable ways to organize the different ways of sharing yourself on-line. As I consider my on-line interactions in the past, I see that I have blurred the lines between these four profiles without even considering it, and I think it was overall to the detriment of my privacy. I have come to believe that the more you can choose the specific manner in which you want to interact or share yourself for each on-line experience, the smarter you will be about your privacy, and the more secure you will be.

Continue reading ‘Being Purposeful About Your Privacy - Part 2′

Being Purposeful About Your Privacy - Part 1

There are not always heroes looking out for our best interests, waiting to come to our rescue when someone has done us wrong. Protecting ourselves is something we all have to learn how to do. The digitally-connected life, however, lends itself to new issues of protection and privacy, and we need to be purposeful in how we share “ourselves” when online.

It occurred to me this afternoon that I have set-up myself to interact in four distinct ways on the Internet. I have, and still do, wrestle with how much of myself to share on this most public of public places, and quite without foresight have found that I have organized my interactions into four distinct profiles, or faces, to others on the Internet.

After thinking about what I did, I believe this is a reasonable way to structure your interactions and your “publicity” or “reachability” or “sharability” – however you want to see it – as you work with others on the Internet. We already do this with other forms of communication – we have a home address and phone number that we don’t give out to just anyone, we have a business address and phone number that we give out with less discretion, and perhaps we have a cell phone or other means of contact that we give out to only a few people (though that is not so much the case anymore with cell phones).

Privacy in the ever-more-connected world is a significant and worthy topic to consider, and worthy of a well thought-out strategy for yourself the more connected you become. Consider the recent commotion over the Google Desktop 3 release, and the feature that allows the archiving of your computer’s index on Google’s servers. Marc Orchant has an excellent analysis and discussion of this feature and the ensuing hubbub (BTW, check out Marc as he now writes for ZDNet: http://blogs.zdnet.com/Orchant/). Marc writes:

Continue reading ‘Being Purposeful About Your Privacy - Part 1′

Send Me an Odeo Voice Message

I just found out about Odeo - a great new way to communicate with people using your actual voice over the Internet. Odeo is a service that allows you to send and receive audio to others for free in a simple and free way. It’s not podcasting – although you could use Odeo for podcasts – but it can be much simpler and more individual. You can subscribe to your Odeo inbox (the messages people send you) via RSS and consequently, via iTunes if you like. Think of it as your personal voice mail box on the Internet that’s free.

You may have seen the “chicklets” on various websites or blogs saying “Send me an Odeo” – I did, and finally checked it out after seeing Blake set it up for Cocoa Radio.

I’ve put a link on the right to contact me via Odeo if you are so inclined. So please, send me an Odeo, and I’ll send you one back!

Technorati Tags: odeo, voice, communication, web2.0

What’s An Intel Chip Doing in a Mac?

…”a whole lot more than it’s ever done in a PC” – quote from Apple’s new ad campaign showing off their new iMac and MacBook Pro with the Intel Core Duo processor.

This great picture was taken by my friend Blake Burris, who produces the Cocoa Radio podcast, during Steve Jobs’ keynote address at MacWorld in San Francisco last week. Mr. Jobs spent some time talking about the iMac with the Intel processors and the new MacBook Pro laptop with the Intel dual processors, and how they are significantly faster than the current generation of PowerPC-based Mac platforms. Both machines look very neat, and if I had extra money lying around I would be very tempted to acquire one – probably the MacBook Pro. I’ll have to wait, however, and stick with my Toshiba M200, which is still great.

If you haven’t watched Steve Jobs’ keynote address from last week (see the link in the paragraph above), I highly recommend taking a look at it. It is impressive in several aspects:

Continue reading ‘What’s An Intel Chip Doing in a Mac?’

My Quest for Electronic Magazine Reading - Part 1

One very natural use of tablet PC’s is the way you can read traditionally paper media in a comfortable format of a slate tablet, or a convertible in slate mode. eBooks are growing in popularity, with several selections on Amazon available for download in electronic format. There are still not enough books in ebook format for me, though, as I did a quick search through my Amazon wish list and found only a couple of the titles available electronically.

Magazines are also exploring electronic delivery, though in various formats. Reading magazines electronically is much more productive for me, as it allows me to more quickly get to where I want to go, and to capture any articles or sections that I want to keep – either via printing to a PDF or capturing to OneNote.

What appears to me to be the de facto and near-ubiquitous standard application for reading magazines in electronic format is Zinio Reader. The application is free, available for Windows and OSX, and the latest version has some added interface elements tailored for the tablet pc. You download the reader and then create an account that you can then link to electronic subscriptions to several top publications. [Note: Zinio offers some titles that are not exactly family friendly, and the Zinio home page displays the covers of these, though they don’t appear to be as explicit as they could be, just suggestive.]

Continue reading ‘My Quest for Electronic Magazine Reading - Part 1′

Professional Formatting Tips in PowerPoint

Presenters University is an excellent site that collects tips, tricks, templates, clip art and other useful content geared towards effective presentations. Microsoft PowerPoint, the ubiquitous presentation delivery tool, is featured, but they also have sections for Apple’s KeyNote and Corel Draw.

One of the new articles added in October is by Troy Chollar of TLC Creative Services. Troy provides 13 tips for professional formatting in PowerPoint, based on his experience and work at his company. Here are a couple of highlights:

• Turn off SNAP OBJECTS TO GRID and SNAP OBJECTS TO OTHER OBJECTS.
• Use the Slide Layout task pane
• Use the Align and Distribute tools in the Draw menu
• Troy offers 2 public tools – PowerPoint add-ins from the PPTxtreme tool set – that help align and format multiple objects between slides. [I was not familiar with these add-ins and they look like they will be very useful]
• Consistent layout of similar objects across multiple slides
• Add shadows, rounded corners and/or beveled edges to inserted photos in a presentation

This article is a great refresher for those that have been putting together PowerPoint presentations for a while, and a great place to go after learning the basics of PowerPoint for the not-so-experienced. I encourage you to check it out.