Social Median Integrates With Google Reader for News Discovery

Social Median, over the last few months, has taken a growing role in my tech news discovery process, falling in line alongside FriendFeed and Google Reader, offering up news submitted by other Social Median users on topics I've asked to follow, such as Apple, Blogging and Lifestreaming. Starting this last week, Social Median made it even easier for me to share news items with fellow site users, by integrating Google Reader shared links into the site, making me appear more active, and dramatically increasing the available news to followers.

Social Median's news sources have, to date, come through "Snips", which are user generated notes, a lot like Tweets on Twitter, and "Clips", which can be done from any page on the Web, through the bookmarklet, or through submitting news directly on the site. As with other social sites, you can "Clip" other users news items, essentially adding your vote and sharing it to those who follow you, or make comments on the story excerpts. Integrating with Google Reader's shared items reduces the effort needed to add news, and Social Median parses the shared content to determine if it is relevant to specific networks, based on keywords, automatically making the shared news available to those following individual topics.


A recent item shared via Google Reader to Social Median
Unlike sites dedicated to showing the most frequently shared items, including Feedheads, RSSMeme and ReadBurner (See Disclosure), SocialMedian doesn't display a leaderboard for stories, focusing instead on offering personalized news and information on the topics you have selected.

Integrating with Google Reader's shared links removes the need to proactively share news to Social Median, cutting out the middleman, and undoubtedly increasing the volume of stories that are on the site. I expect the move to be good in terms of making the site more of a go-to for topical news, but also that it may result in fewer comments and clips per story.

You can see what I've shared to Social Median here: http://www.socialmedian.com/louisgray. Those from Google Reader are said as "Submitted by louisgray from Google Reader". My Google Reader shared links blog is here.

The Even Geekier Approach to Fantasy Football

You would think with trying to keep the blog regular, working a full-time job, keeping active on all kinds of social networks, and raising two month old twins, I wouldn't need yet another time sink. But, clearly not knowing my own limits, I agreed to return to the world of Fantasy Football after taking a two-year hiatus, re-joining the league where I was active from 2001-2005, even though I haven't been paying attention to the NFL at all, and couldn't tell you the starters on just about any squad. So, why do I think I have a chance taking on a group of couch potatoes who have bye weeks and depth charts memorized? The answer: Because I'll be the biggest nerd in the room.

Here's what I do to keep myself challenging for the league title each year:
(I've won the 12-team league twice in five years and finished second once):

1. I don't pick favorite teams or favorite players.

When I was growing up, the San Francisco 49ers were the team of the decade. They won four Super Bowls, and Joe Montana, Jerry Rice, Ronnie Lott and Roger Craig were superstars. But in the last decade or so, the team might as well have fallen into the Bay, and I don't really care. As a result, I'm not drafting them too highly or unfairly promoting my hatred of their rival.

2. I only bring a laptop to draft day, not a pile of magazines and highlighters.

While some guys show up with their dog-eared copies of ESPN the Magazine and Sports Illustrated or Football Weekly, and six colored markers, as well as the year's bye week schedule and an up to the minute injury report, I just bring my laptop and have Microsoft Excel ready to go. While they shuffle papers around and debate how their home mock drafts differ from the real deal, I'm ready to sort and click between tabs to find my data.

3. I believe past performance is the best indicator of future performance.

I don't need to see teams play or practice to believe a quarterback and a wide receiver have "chemistry", or need to see if a guy has had a good off-season regimen. Instead, the most important data is how well they performed relative to their peers at the position in previous years, according to the rules of the league you are playing.


My 2004 Data Set With 2003 Results
That said, I use the tools that are available to get the data I want, and it all goes into Excel, including:

• A worksheet that shows the previous years' league results, sortable by position, name, team, total points, overall points ranking, and average points per week.
• A worksheet that shows the bye weeks
• A worksheet that shows the most recent injury report, by team
• One or more worksheet with the proposed draft order from ESPN or USA Today

I then create two net new tabs, including:

• A worksheet that will display the team I have drafted.
• A worksheet that tracks the entire league's draft for the season

Once all the data is in there, I'm ready to go to work, as soon as the draft starts. As picks are made by each other team, I quickly highlight those who are off the board in multiple places - on the tab showing last year's statistics, and on the mock draft boards from ESPN and USA Today. At this point, the draft isn't that much different in Excel as it is on paper, but as time progresses, and the all too typical first few rounds get chewed up by running backs, quarterbacks and the occasional wide receiver, my preparedness has an advantage.

If your fantasy football league was online last year, all you usually have to do is go to last season's end of year report, and do a copy/paste into Excel, which will recognize all the columns and set you up for sorting nirvana. If at first you don't succeed... keep trying until you do. Worst case, save the pages as HTML and you can bring them to the draft day on the laptop.


The 2004 Draft, A Down Year for Me
Where others are deciding whether to take a team defense or their third running back, I can go and use Excel's Sort option to its fullest. I can take the highest players available based on their points per game average from the previous season, or do the same to fill a position I need. I can know whether taking a good quarterback will mean all that much relative to the next highly rated option, or if I should keep filling the backfield.


My 2004 Roster, For Example
And the latest rounds are where I make a killing. At this point, especially as most drafts are on Saturday mornings, and guys are joking around about taking players who are injured, or complaining about how the guy just before them snaked Fred Taylor or Torry Holt, I can sneak in and find players that were rated highly last year or by the major sports publications, yet haven't been drafted.

In 2004, my 10th round pick ended up being Willis McGahee of the Bills. In 2005, I got Larry Johnson of the Chiefs in round 12, who ended up being excellent injury protection for Priest Holmes, scoring 17 touchdowns on 1,549 yards rushing. As the rest of the teams use all the allotted time, often accidentally drafting players that have already been taken, my turn comes around every 12th pick, and I look to my Excel sheets for the answer. Yes, they overlooked my secret weapon, and I'll be setting myself up for the win, again.

This year's draft time is 10 a.m. tomorrow morning, and I've made it a little more fun by getting Drew Olanoff of ReadBurner and Strands to be part of the festivities, as well as two friends from work, all of whom are joining the league for the first time. We'll see who wins the battle of Fantasy Football geeks.

MacBlips and GadgetBlips Launch to Capture Leading Tech Stories

When I met with Jason and Erin Gurney of Ballhype and Showhype fame earlier this year, I practically sold them on the idea of launching an Apple Macintosh-focused site, which would distill the many Apple related stories from around the Web and provide a centralized site where Mac fans could discuss news, rumors and find a community with other Mac fans. Today, with the launch of MacBlips, they made good on that idea. And as if that weren't enough, in parallel, they launched a site called GadgetBlips, which gathers the top stories from sites like Engadget and Gizmodo, and provides gadget lovers a place to talk up their cell phones, TVs, laptops, or video game consoles, to name a few.


Both sites share a common foundation. MacBlips and GadgetBlips are constantly scouring the blogosphere to find those stories most-frequently referenced in articles, and bringing them to the site's front page, where users can vote them up or down, or make comments, like Digg, and of course, like BallHype and ShowHype.


MacBlips and GadgetBlips users can also submit stories they find from around the Web, and blog owners who write about Mac, Apple and gadgets can register their sites and track activity, to see which of their articles were found the most interesting to the community.

Speaking of community, any user can create or participate in subgroups on either site, focused on specific topics, be it iPods, iPhones, Mac Rumors, the BlackBerry or Nintendo Wii, for example. And as with most social networking sites, you can befriend other users, and be alerted when they have activity on the site.

The idea behind MacBlips and GadgetBlips is essentially to provide a single site that finds the very best Mac news and Gadget news, without forcing you to read all the related RSS feeds, and to help you find other Mac-heads and gadget freaks like yourself who like to debate wireless plans, discuss how to switch from Windows to Mac, or just when Apple might release the iPhone Nano.

As somebody who in the past has scrolled through screen after screen on MacSurfer.com to find the best articles, or gone one by one from MacWorld to AppleInsider, MacRumors and MacInTouch to be on top of the latest Apple news, the arrival of MacBlips is a welcome sight. But with so many other Mac-related sites out there, it should be interesting to see if the new addition will have folks changing where they choose to engage. And given the Gurneys' efforts on BallHype, which included game picks for sporting events and tournaments around March Madness and the NBA playoffs, for example, I'm very interested to see what kind of predictive behaviors they can do for the next MacWorld Expo Keynote.

You can find MacBlips at http://www.macblips.com/
You can find GadgetBlips at http://www.gadgetblips.com/

On both sites, you can find my ID as "louismg". (MacBlips | GadgetBlips)

BackType Goes Forward With Comment Tracker and Search

A little over two weeks ago, I reported on Disqus' platform updates, which brought new features, including the ability to show a "comment blog" that displays all your comments on the platform from around the Web. Today, a new service called BackType has opened up to go beyond Disqus, finding my comments (and yours) from many different commenting platforms and assigning them to a single stream. The service also lets you follow other BackType users, and search across the BackType community to find popular topics of discussion, no matter which blog, or which commenting engine, they take place on.


BackType Shows Comments from Those You Follow Around the Web
At times, reader comments can be just as thought provoking, if not more so, than the original author's blog post. Disqus made some noise this week with the introduction of the ability to "reblog" comments as individual posts, and last month, Fred Wilson of A VC openly wondered if there would come a time when comments were treated equally with posts on popular news aggregators, like Techmeme.


You Can Search BackType for Comments that Contain Keywords
With comments carrying so much weight, it's no wonder some bloggers are up in arms when they've seen their comments move to RSS feed readers or social media sites. But to date, no single service has given comments equal weight, until the arrival of BackType.


You Can Select People to Follow on BackType
When you register for BackType, you can add your blog, or your page on popular comment engines, like Disqus. You can also click on the "People" tab to see the most followed users of BackType, see their commenting frequency, and click through to see their activity. A few BackType users of note, at launch, include Andrew Weissman, Chris Brogan and the aforementioned Fred Wilson. On each person's page, you not only see their most recent comments, but you can also click on the blog icons on the right side of the page to see their comments on specific sites.

Like on Twitter, FriendFeed or other social sites, you can both follow BackType users, or be followed, and you can see the statistics on each user page. Given the site's new status, the most popular people barely break a dozen followers, but I can see how following someone's comment stream could be a lot more rich than their 140-character updates on Twitter.

If you like the idea of a comment blog, you'll really like BackType. If you like seeing what your friends and peers are doing around the Web, in full sentences and paragraphs, not just microupdates, then BackType makes sense as well. You can follow me at http://www.backtype.com/louisgray.

10 Suggestions To Improve FriendFeed's Beta

On Monday, FriendFeed previewed a new user interface, in beta, aimed to make the site easier to read, and also, to help people get updates from their "favorite" friends, through the deployment of lists that show a subset of your friends' updates, or through a new ability to remove individuals' updates from your home feed. The update also included a few new features, including photo posting from the main feed, a new UI that shows rooms and service details on all pages, and the ability to browse FriendFeed through the eyes of another user by seeing their home feed.

While the updates were welcome, and visible at beta.friendfeed.com, I feel the team missed an opportunity to make some critical updates which I hope are on the near-term roadmap. Here are some of the big ones.

1. There Are Still No User Profiles

In December, when I posted 10 Suggestions for FriendFeed, my number one request was for an option to add a small biography or profile to each user's page. While it's true that a person's collective Tweets or blog posts or bookmarks give a good indication to who they are, it would still be good to have more details around a fellow user, as well as the option to search and find new users based on details in their profile, for example, by company, by geography or university.

2. The Issue of Duplicates and Original Items Has Not Been Addressed

I might take multiple actions on single item. For example, I could post this blog post, tweet about it, add it to my Google Reader shared items list, bookmark it on Delicious, submit it to Digg and add it to StumbleUpon. In theory, as FriendFeed knows I did all this, it could show my multiple actions on one item. It would also be good to click on an item and see "Other Conversations Around this Item" or "Find the Original Item" to reduce parallel comment threads and reduce the number of times that a share by a popular user trumps an original piece by a less-known user.

3. There Is No Ability to Message Other Users

As the service has become a foundation for communication and sharing, it makes sense that you could send notes within FriendFeed to other users. While some have grown tired of DMs (Direct Messages) on Twitter, they are very useful for short one-to-one notes. On FriendFeed, you either need to publicly message somebody, or dig around their personal blog, assuming they have one, to track down an e-mail address.

4. The Controversial Default Users Are Still There

One of the most universally disliked issues with FriendFeed was that new users were guided to follow nine of the most visible users, reinforcing some people's concern that the so-called A-list had transitioned from the blogosphere to FriendFeed as well. Among the most notable critics were Allen Stern of CenterNetworks (See: FriendFeed Follower Patterns Exposed) and Om Malik of GigaOM (See: FriendFeed. More Like (Fake)FriendFeed) While co-founder Paul Buchheit called the issue "a growing misunderstanding", and that the recommendations were made from the "entire set of FriendFeed users", not "hand selected", the fact remained that the popular users were getting more popular.

Now, instead of the default nine users who were presented to all new FriendFeed subscribers, the new beta interface instead shows 24 default users in a three by eight grid. I signed up to an account with a new e-mail address and was presented with two dozen users. (Click the left image to see all 24) 22 of those users were men, 22 were white and there were two Asian (one male, one female). Of the 24, almost all are popular faces in the tech blogosphere, reflecting the true lack of diversity in this list. My real FriendFeed friends list has a very healthy mixture of black, white, Asian, male and female, tech and non-tech, which you couldn't gather from these defaults, myself included.

I'd be lying if I didn't say I was flattered to be part of the default list, drawn from popular FriendFeed users, but if it were up to me, I'd have the ability to remove people from this list or refresh to get more options (like Facebook does it), or to enter keywords to show what I'm most interested in, which would give me some suggested friends to start.


5. There Is No Way to Share Items With a Subset of People

Through the addition of rooms with specific topics, and the new addition of lists, you can share items to locations outside your public feed, or see a feed from a subset of users. But what you can't do is make a custom list, and then share an item to only those people, effectively "blocking" all other users for that item, or making part of your feed private. If for instance, I wanted to share pictures of my twins to a subset called "recent parents", but didn't want to share it with the techie crowd, I don't have that option.

6. You Cannot Granularly Use the Power of FriendFeed's Database

As there is a river of noise rushing into FriendFeed, mastering the "hide" option is essential. In addition to hiding all items from a service or a person, you can also display only those items that have comments or likes. But you can't say you only want to see items with multiple comments, and you can't view the site to see all items with five or more likes, or search for items with multiple comments that contain a keyword, for instance.

7. Hiding People from the Main Feed is a Bad Idea

Not everybody is one of the 24 most-followed users. For those people who are new to the service, or those who are less visible, it's not uncommon that they are starving for interaction, in the form of likes and comments. If people are adding friends and tucking them away without having to see their updates, this will further increase the gap between the haves and have nots.

This "fake follow", as it has been termed, also opens the door a bit more for unscrupulous folks who will aggressively follow and hide you from the main feed, and hope to gain followers and attention through social reciprocity. The Friends feed should show all friends, and users should instead rely on the new Lists feature to drill down to a smaller group.

8. The Advanced Search Functionality Still Needs Exceptions

It's not uncommon for people to search for their own name on popular social networks. On FriendFeed, this practice is essentially useless, as searching for your own name shows all your own activity. You should be able to search FriendFeed for keywords that exclude your own activity, or specific users.

9. Aggressive Hiders of Content Are Short-Changed Per Page

The default number of items on FriendFeed is 30 per page. But if you are an aggressive hider of specific services, of Friend of a Friend, etc., it's not uncommon for more than half of your 30 items to actually be hidden, giving you half the content, with a link at the bottom saying "Show XX hidden entries", with XX being the number of hidden items. For me, this means at times, especially during peak Twittering hours, I may only get 10 items on the front page, and clicking to page 2 is useless, as by the time I've scanned those 10, they would represent items 31-60, and be shown again.

What should happen, in my opinion, is that you should always see 30 items, after the hiding has taken place.

10. The "Share Something" Box Should Add Video, Documents, etc.

With the latest update, in beta, FriendFeed added the ability to share photos directly to the site with the "Share Something" box. I believe the direct sharing to FriendFeed of URLs and comments has been an ever-growing section of the site, and it could be taken up quite a bit by allowing the direct sharing of small videos, audio, Word or PDF documents, and even polling. There are many simple HTML based polling solutions out there, and FriendFeed would be a great platform for polling followers easily.

There would no doubt be issues with file size, copyright, etc., as we have seen with YouTube and other content repositories, but the community could be counted on to police itself.

Now, it would be easy and see the above and get the impression I found the update unimpressive, or that I'm souring on the service, but I'm not. As with any power user of a service, I am exposed to common complaints and suggestions that so far, haven't been addressed, and I can find them useful myself. The new UI is an improvement over the old, and I have found some positive ways to use lists to gain smaller feeds, but I hope we can start to hear about some of the above features soon.

My Google Reader Leaderboard: August 2008

Last month, I shared with you the top 40 sources for my Google Reader shared items link blog. See: Roll Your Own Blog Leaderboard With Google Reader Trends. As a month has passed and it's the 26th of the month, as promised, here is the list updated for the last 30 days of activity.

First, the dataset:

According to Google Reader, from my 368 subscriptions, over the last 30 days I read 15,566 items and shared 765 items. Month over month, despite adding 32 new subscriptions, they contributed 820 fewer items, and I shared 154 fewer items than in July.

Second: The leaders for August of 2008:

Unlike last month, where items from my own blog held the #2 position, this month, thanks to some strong content from guest bloggers, it held the #1 position with 45 total shares. As mentioned last month, I don't want to manipulate the statistics, so I'm leaving the data here. Close behind in the #2 position for August was Duncan Riley's The Inquisitr, up from #3, and Robert Scoble's Shared Link Blog, which rose from the #14 position. TechCrunch, last month's leader fell to #4, followed by Read/Write Web, which was #4 overall in July. All percentages shown are the result of taking the number of shares in the month per source, divided by the total number of shares. (In this case N/763)

Position	Blog	% of Shares
1.	louisgray.com	6.28%
2.	The Inquisitr	5.58%
3.	Robert Scoble's Shared Link Blog	5.16%
4.	TechCrunch	4.60%
5.	Read/Write Web	4.18%
6.	Profy.com	2.93%
7.	Webware.com	2.65%
8.	CenterNetworks	2.37%
9.	9 to 5 Mac	1.81%
10.	GigaOM	1.67%
11.	Scripting News	1.53%
12.	Scobleizer	1.39%
13.	Andy DeSoto	1.26%
14.	Kyle Lacy	1.26%
15.	WinExtra	1.26%
16.	SEO and Tech Daily	1.26%
17.	I'm Not Actually a Geek	1.26%
18.	Alexander van Elsas	1.12%
19.	Stay N' Alive	1.12%
20.	Twitter Blog	0.98%
21.	Chris Brogan	0.98%
22.	Google Blogoscoped	0.98%
23.	Fred Wilson	0.98%
24.	Mark Evans	0.98%
25.	Michael Fruchter	0.98%
26.	David Risley	0.98%
27.	Silicon Alley Insider	0.98%
28.	Technologizer	0.98%
29.	Rex Hammock	0.84%
30.	Pixel Bits	0.84%
31.	Mathew Ingram	0.84%
32.	TechWag	0.84%
33.	Webomatica	0.84%
34.	Regular Geek	0.70%
35.	Epicenter	0.70%
36.	The Boy Genius Report	0.70%
37.	Sarah In Tampa	0.70%
38.	Venture Chronicles	0.70%
39.	Daring Fireball	0.70%
40.	Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat	0.70%

All told, these top 40 sources accounted for 477 of the 765 shares over the last 30 days, or 62.4% of the total, meaning the other 328 sources accounted for 288 total shares, or 37.6% of the total, showing there are a number of sites I consume, but never share, which could include pre-determined searches and the many sports or work-oriented sites I don't share to the public feed. If your feed isn't in the top 40 here, or you think I'm not subscribed at all, but should be, feel free to drop in your site in the comments. And if you're an avid Google Reader shared links blogger, be sure to add your feed to ReadBurner, where I'm an advisor, so it can be counted.

You can find my Google Reader shared items link blog here, or see them included in my FriendFeed.

Netvouz – A Quality One Man Bookmarking Show

By Mark Dykeman of Broadcasting Brain (FriendFeed/Twitter)

Despite recent predictions of the death of social bookmarking, the fact remains that there are still a number of excellent Web based tools out there that allow you to save and tag links to webpages in a public forum. Delicious and Magnolia are often regarded as the market leaders in this space, with funding and bodies to get the job done.

However, as the two leaders deal with interface and development model changes, there’s a pretty powerful bookmarking tool that’s been building up its own fanbase for a number of years. It’s practically a one man show and a labor of love. Let’s give Netvouz some of the attention that it deserves.


Click for Larger Image

Henrik Sjostrand has been pursuing his bookmarking dream for almost a decade. Netvouz (the name is a melange of the words "Net" and "Rendezvouz") has been in the public eye since 2005, but the concept emerged much earlier. Put simply, Sjostrand wanted a good Web-based bookmarking tool and so he built it. And tinkered with it. And improved it. And maintained it. With relatively little help from anyone else. The result is a quick and clean user interface and underlying application. Netvouz is a free service with virtually no monetization and no marketing except for word of mouth. Sjostrand says that his user base is "at 6 digits right now" although he plans to cull about 100,000 spammers from the user base. In terms of marketing and promotion, Sjostrand says:

"…Netvouz has grown very well by itself, and I actually prefer a bit slower growth so I can keep the site running well without suffering from poor performance, security problems, spammers etc."

He is focused on making Netvouz a strong product and doesn't spend time marketing the product.


Click for Larger Image

Sjostrand feels that his product has several advantages over other popular social bookmarking tools, including:

• The ability to use both folders and tags for organizing bookmarks (he prefers folders for his own use, but recognizes the power of tags)
• Performance (hence his emphasis on a clean user interface)
• Link Checker and Broken Links Manager continually check to ensure that your bookmarks are still valid (I personally haven’t seen this function anywhere else)

Netvouz also uses a ranking system for bookmarks, allows notes, and allows bookmarks to be made either public or private. Potential future projects to enhance Netvouz include:

• Better integration with Firefox and Internet Explorer
  (note that there is a Firefox add-on for Netvouz).
• Further technical improvements for speed and ease of use
• Possible creation of an API
  (I suggested that he should provide the ability to track Netvouz entries in FriendFeed)

Netvouz is strong in bookmarking functionality, but it does not have the same social or community functions that Delicious and Magnolia use. However, you can still share your bookmarks with other people. And, if nothing else, Netvouz is a good way to maintain bookmarks for yourself. Why not give Netvouz a try? Maybe it’s too much bookmarking functionality, maybe it’s just right. It’s definitely not too little. If nothing else, by supporting Netvouz, you get to support the "one man band" concept and recognize the work of a guy who loves his hobby.

Read more by Mark Dykeman at Broadcasting-Brain.com.

The Following/Listening Ratio - Are Your Followers Actually Listening?

By Jesse Stay of Stay N' Alive (Identi.ca/FriendFeed)



Let's face it. One of the main reasons you and I, and almost anyone, are on social services is that you want to interact with new people and expand your current network of connections. There's no doubt about it that there's power in this concept - as you grow your network with quality people, you will meet others that could potentially help grow your brand, share your product, or build your audience. A large audience is valuable.

In the early days of Social Networking (hmm...that would be what, 1 year ago?), growing your network and having the majority of those following you also listening to you was very easy to achieve. It was simple - if you followed someone, you were making a commitment to also listen to their updates. I'm seeing a trend amongst my followers, however, which I think is changing the effectiveness of this technique. Where just one year ago, I was usually one of among 20 or 30 people my followers were following, quite a large part of my followers today are following 200 people or more.

I'm noticing on the larger networks like Twitter that the conversation is starting to fizzle. I may post something, but I don't always get the responses I used to. My followers are simply following more people now and I'm one of hundreds they have to pay attention to. I don't take offense to this - on Twitter I too follow over 1,200 people. I have my own strategy for listening to the most important posts using track and RSS and other techniques, but I'll be first to admit I don't catch every single update like I used to. Twitter has now become an aggregation and information tool for me for learning about people and events - it has lost much of its "conversation" nature that it used to have. This is the case for many other people, and not just the big bloggers and early-adopters any more.

The Follower/Listening Ratio

This begs the question, at what time does a social service lose its effectiveness in building relationships through communication, and at what time does it become purely a "data gathering and sharing" tool? Ideally, if all your social services, networks, and tools had the perfect ratio enabling all who follow you actually listen to you, your potential for a successful network of followers/following would be much more effective. This is the problem when social services like Twitter get too big - they foster the lack of good relationships the bigger they get, especially if they don't build the tools to foster this. Limiting the number of people you can follow doesn't necessary solve the issue though, as there is still power in also being able to aggregate and track information about lots of people.

I'm currently posting most of my updates via Identi.ca. They will have this problem as well if they grow too big, but one solution for me is to ensure I'm always on the new, upcoming networks so that the number of those people listening to me are following remains small, and more people are paying attention to my updates that way. Not everyone can do this though, and I'll admit this isn't the ideal situation and will not last for long.

Sites That Do it Right

There are a few sites that seem to be doing this right (to an extent), and frankly, I'm seeing much better communication and relationships fostered via those services vs. the other services like Twitter that seem to be getting bigger without the proper tools to foster such relationships. Two of those stand out with some great features to foster this ratio and keep it strong that I'd like to share.

Facebook

Facebook, the big monolith that hit 100,000,000 users today, seems to have grown well with tools to enable users to foster their relationships. Facebook is supposed to be about people, after all. First of all, Facebook allows categorization of friends into "lists" which you can arrange privacy settings around and allows for easy sending of mail to groups of people. Setting privacy settings allows each user to ensure only certain groups can see certain pieces of information about them. This helps reduce the unneeded information your followers see, and ensures they only see the most important information that they would be interested in about you.

In addition to that, with the new Facebook design, you can now filter out what you want to see about people. So, if I no longer want to see information about Joe I can hide that in my news feed and his updates will never appear again. I'm still friends with Joe, I can still contact him and interact with him, but this way I'm truly paying attention to those I'm truly interested in. In addition to that I can do things such as filter so I only see photos, or only updates from a certain application. My capability to listen is better on Facebook, and the ratio I mention is much better. The discussions are better and happen more often on Facebook because of this.

FriendFeed

FriendFeed has some similar filtering functions to Facebook. Let's start with the current features, and the ability the FriendFeed gives you to "hide" updates by a particular individual. If you don't want to see updates by someone, just "hide" their updates and only the updates from those you're interested in will show.

Yesterday, FriendFeed also announced some brand new features that make building and fostering relationships and discussion much better. For instance, I can add particular individuals to a "favorites" list. This means I can now follow all the updates of my favorite "followees" and just skim the rest. This ensures that more people are listening to what they want, and not ignoring the things they might not want to ignore.

With these tools, Facebook and FriendFeed become much more effective tools for growing and fostering your network. It's important that as you grow your network that you ensure that not only are you building the network, but that those following you are actually listening to you. Choosing the right network and strategy to do this is important. Having 1,000 followers on Twitter may not be the best thing for you if not all of them have a way to pay attention to your updates. Pick the networks (and the two I mention aren't the only ones - they are just the two I use) that work best for you at fostering conversation and relationships, and it may just be okay to ignore the others, or at least focus a little less on them as you build your relationships through the more effective methods.

What are some better ways you would recommend to strengthen the followers/listeners ratio of your network?

If You Look Hard Enough, Conflicts of Interest Are Everywhere

Cyndy Aleo-Carreira, contributing editor at The Industry Standard and professional guest poster in a number of Web sites, including this blog and Duncan Riley's The Inquisitr, has a great discussion starter this evening on bloggers and their conflicts of interest. The piece, titled Out of the Navels and Into the Mirrors, asks specifically if bloggers should talk about companies where they have a financial investment, any kind of part-time or full-time role, or if they should become friends with those they cover. Though broad, her questions likely resonate with many of us involved in blogging and reporting in general, and it's very likely you'll find a wide array of answers, depending who is polled. But each of us comes in with specific likes and dislikes, or personal history, which impacts everything we do, and displays our underlying bias, financial or not.

First, she asks, "Should bloggers cover companies they invest in?"

I almost immediately want to say no. But in actuality, investors in a company usually know it very well, especially if it's an early-stage situation, where they will know it better than the general public. It's no secret they'll likely be more positive on the company, but if they're fair and disclose the relationship, you may learn a great deal.

Good examples of people who talk about companies they are invested in include Fred Wilson of AVC, and Mark Cuban of Blog Maverick.

Second, she asks, "Should bloggers continue blogging once they join boards, take day-job positions with a company, or start/buy a company?"

Again, disclosure is needed. There are many official company blogs that are written by employees, openly. There are other blogs, like Mini-Microsoft, written anonymously, by an employee who is not an approved representative of the company who has unique insight as a full-time employee.

In a more close to home case, Adam Ostrow, CEO of ReadBurner, stopped blogging about ReadBurner on Mashable when he helped acquired the site. (See also: Did ReadBurner Acquisition Cause Conflict of Interest for Mashable?) When I joined the team to help as an advisor, I spelled out my hope to be transparent, and will disclose the role any time I get close to talking about the space.

Finally, she asks, "Should bloggers make friends with people from the companies they cover?"

I think this is absolutely human nature. I have a tendency to be positive on this blog. I talk about companies I like, services I use, and others I have big hopes for. In the process of investigating these services, often I trade a lot e-mails and phone calls with entrepreneurs, which can get to knowing them well or considering them friends. Most of the time, it's not the same kind of friend you can watch a baseball game with or catch a movie, but you do end up rooting for them and may at times gloss over some bugs in hopes they'll suceeed. (See also: My Double Standard for Web Services and Does Negativity Deliver Credibility? If So, That's Nuts.)

Being friendly can lead to a more collaborative environment, where you can both get information early, but also lend a helping hand to those who need it. I've never shied away from playing an informal QA role for services that need aid, and I want to instill a level of trust with those I do engage so they know they can trust me with confidential data.

Beyond these questions, my biases are everywhere, and they impact how I write and my opinions, which do show up. I happen to prefer Apple Mac OS X to Windows, even with the occasional glitch that impacts my Apple experience. I happen to be LDS and wasn't too excited about the rumors spread last week. I like sports, I tend to think Cal is better than Stanford at just about everything, even when it's clear I'm wrong, and I do have friends in the blogosphere - some of whom I've done podcasts with or traded e-mails with or phone calls. I will link to them more often, I will interact with them on social sites more often, and I will comment on their posts more often. (Cyndy and Duncan included)

On rare occasions, interactions with people behind services also results in free stuff, which for some, could lead to bias. I have free t-shirts from Disqus, FriendFeed, and Browzmi, for instance, all which came after I wrote about them a few times. I have a world-famous CenterNetworks sticker, and my babies have schwag from ReadBurner, Shyftr, NewsCred and other places (largely because I asked for it). I also represent standard demographics. I'm male in my early 30s. I live in California, in the Bay Area specifically. I work in the tech sector for a private company, and have since 1998. I have two young kids. Each of these things impacts my view of the world and what I like or don't like.

Rather than setting hard and fast rules about bloggers going out of their way to avoid topics they likely know well, or asking them to be friendless automatons, we should ask them to be more transparent and clear if they are acting with real bias. It's that which will make the difference between trusted and untrustworthy - and enable bloggers to look in the mirrors comfortably again.

There is No Social Media Overload

Every day, there are more and more great services to investigate in the world of social media. Each one breaks new ground in terms of features, focus or user interface. There are many different sites that target general social networking, some are for business, some are for dating, some are for microblogging, and others for service aggregation. And there will be many more. While some are calling for a pause in the innovation, somewhat fatigued by the implied redundancy or overwhelmed by chasing down comments and conversations in new places, it's worth noting there's time in the day to manage a good number of sites, and not all the winners have yet been crowned.

To have a full deck of social media tools, you essentially need the following:

• 1 or more blogs that you manage.
• 1 or more accounts on an RSS feed reader.
• 1 or more microblogging identities.
• 1 or more accounts on a business networking tool.
• 1 or more accounts on a social network.
• 1 or more accounts on a service aggregator or lifestream.
  

(Also helpful: A social bookmarking site, online photo site, music recommendation service, etc.)

For me, this means I blog here, use Google Reader, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and FriendFeed as my core applications for each category. But below these headliners are others.

For RSS, I also use Shyftr and liked AssetBar before it went away. I've tried Bloglines, FeedEachOther and NewsGator as well. There are also tools that interact with RSS, like Toluu, which helps you find feeds your friends like and integrates with Google Reader, and the sites dedicated to finding the most shared items in Google Reader, like ReadBurner, RSSMeme and Feedheads. (Disclosure: I am an advisor to ReadBurner)

For microblogging, beyond Twitter, you have Identi.ca, Plurk, and now, Rejaw. I'm signed up at each, but use Twitter primarily, copying posts to Identi.ca, via Posty. I need to check out Rejaw more, but am no expert.

For business networking, there's also Plaxo, which has morphed into a lifestreaming application.

For social networking, many still use MySpace, or Friendster, but Facebook has the momentum and the development on its side. Orkut never got the traction expected.

As for lifestreaming and aggregation, I am absolutely overweighted here, and I enjoy it. Justin Korn referred to it as "Super Kickass Social Network Following Power", but if you're interested, it's fairly easy to be engaged on sites like FriendFeed, Social Median and Strands all at once, like I'm trying to do.

I like FriendFeed because it easily pulls in my activity from around the Web and has a sharp community with good conversations and hiding. I like Social Median because it lets me just see news and posts on topics I pick or from people I follow. I like Strands because it has similar elements to FriendFeed, but more filtering and some good potential. I also know it can continue to improve because it’s early. Just in the last 36 hours, I've gone from being a nothing on Strands to having more than 100 people whom I can interact with.

Below this crust of leaders, you also have smaller sites like Yokway and LetsProve, where I'm registered, but haven't done much of late. FriendBinder doesn't seem to have taken off either, and BlogRize, though interesting, got quiet fast, and seems to have gone away, as did Mergelab. The truth is that we don't know which sites are going to win, and it makes sense to be registered everywhere and active on those places where you find the best community and the best content.

Of course, just because I sign up for something, or find something, doesn't mean that you're obligated to try it out. Not all sites are for everyone. But I'm far from being overloaded with Social Media. You just have to find balance, time, and keep remembering there is no quota and you don't have to read everything. Contrary to some belief, I'm not constantly on each site. I just read quickly, decide quickly and respond quickly. None of these sites is a real big time sink, unless you force yourself to read everything. It's easier to let your friends decide the best pieces, and for you to rely on search tools to get the rest, whether it be through Twitter Search, or pre-determined Google blog searches.

The only way you get social media overload is if you don't manage it well, just like you can get RSS overload or e-mail overload, or so I've heard. Even as there are more services to engage with, the number of hours you have to work with them is still the same. So do check out as many as you think have potential, and stick with the ones that offer you the community you're looking for, the engagement you need, and the best feature set. You'll find your niche.

See Also:

• Relax, Bloggers: Nobody Is Keeping Score, and There's No Quota.
• My Social Media Consumption Workflow
• Continuous Parallel Attention: My New Reality

Strands Lifestreaming Beta High On Potential and Filters

There's no question the lifestreaming space has just exploded over the last year, with services like Plaxo Pulse and FriendFeed leading the way, accompanied by MyBlogLog, SocialThing, Profilactic and others. Practically all services aggregate your social activity across networks and let you display it in one area, with the option to follow friends and interact with their activity. One of the newest in this space is Strands, which bills itself as a destination site for people to discover new recommended items around the Web from friends. The service, currently in private beta, has some very interesting features, but also has a lot of room to go to supplant one of the bigger names.


As with the many other alternatives out there, you start your activity on Strands by adding your many services around the Web, starting with the most well-known services, like Twitter, Google Reader and Delicious, but the service also supports several other sites not commonly found elsewhere, including Webshots, BlockBuster, Hype Machine and Meneame.


When you add these services, as with other competitors, Strands creates a feed for you, which can then be subscribed to by other users.

As you currently can only get into Strands by being invited, you will start out with at least one friend, but you can find more users by seeing who your friends follow, or by clicking the people button at the top of the page. Strands, as far as I know, has the best array of ways to discover new followers, showing you who is the most followed, who's new to the site, or who is the top by a specific category, like Blogs, Images, Music or Bookmarks. Each person's profile is displayed with their avatar, gender, age and location. You can also search by name or e-mail.

Once you have subscribed to a few people, you can see their activity on Strands' Home screen, which displays, chronologically, the item posted, who added it, the service it originated from. You can then take action on those items with a simple Like or Dislike, indicated by thumbs up or thumbs down, you can comment on the item, click a pushpin to indicate an item is saved, or click an arrow to forward the item to those who follow you. (The equivalent of resharing on FriendFeed)

The interface for Strands if both cluttered and spartan at the same time, if that makes any sense.

Unlike FriendFeed, which offers a clean white background, soft gray text for comments, but little else, except a top navigation bar, Strands offers a wide array of ways to sift through the noise and find specific items. You can filter your feed by people who just follow you, you can show your own feed, or show subgroups of your friends. For example, I started a group called "Digerati", that includes Chris Brogan, Marshall Kirkpatrick, Corvida and others on the site.

You can also filter by category, including Blogs & Notes, Images, Music, Movies & TV, Bookmarks and others. FriendFeed offers this functionality by service by clicking on the service icon, but it's not spelled out, nor does it group similar services (like Delicious and Magnolia for instance). On top of filters, you also have "Hot Posts" which show items popular with your friends, marked by likes and comments, and the ability to have granularity, so you don't share all services with all people. For example, you may want to share some items with friends, but not family or coworkers.

The many different options on Strands make it useful to find things fast, but it also shoehorns the Home feed into a small center position. Arguably, this is the most important part of the site, so its power is greatly diminished. Strands also doesn't auto-refresh, asking you to click a refresh icon on the page, or in your browser. This gives the site more of a static feeling than other sites which do autorefresh, where it seems new data is constantly coming in.

Also, like most good services today, Strands offers a desktop alternative to the Web site with an Adobe AIR application, which keeps you updated on your friends' activity and watches your iTunes to capture what you're listening to, as well as a bookmarklet.

Does the world need another lifestreaming service? With so many on the market, it's interesting to see what aspects one site will get right or what they'll miss. Strands doesn't have the feeling of community today that FriendFeed does, given its newness and obscurity. And like many engineering-driven services, it can be seen at times to have sacrificed the user experience for more features. I've said previously that "the feature war is the wrong war" for social media, which needs to find new ways to connect people, their likes and their activity. Strands does a good job letting me drill down into specific areas, or in helping find new folks, but I'm hoping they can reduce some of the site clutter, and make the site really come to life.

As the service is in private beta, I have a very small number of invites, so leave your e-mail in the comments if you are interested, and I'll see what I can do.

DISCLOSURE: I was introduced to Strands by Drew Olanoff, the Community Manager at Strands, who started there in July. Drew is also the CTO of ReadBurner, where I am an advisor, and hold a small equity position. While Drew gave me an account to test Strands, he did not request an article, nor review this in any way.

Apple's "Ease of Use" Fails Me Again, Time Capsule the Culprit

Two of the major reasons I've been an Apple Macintosh fan from just about my first introduction to computers have been the systems' ease of use, and product quality. There was a time when I would be happier using a decade-old Mac than the latest-generation Dell or HP, and that I felt absolutely sure buying AppleCare would be a waste of money. But over the years, it seems product quality has slipped, and I'm almost as likely to get a bum product as one I can expect to be perfect.

This most recent Saturday, I was delighted to pick up the long-awaited iPhone 3G, and also, a 500 Gigabyte Time Capsule, for backup. Now that the twins are here, I've been thinking to back up all their photos and videos would be a good idea.

So far, the iPhone 3G experience has been outstanding. I returned my Blackberry to IT today after transferring my phone number yesterday evening. Now that a friend of mine passed along a Bluetooth-enabled Jawbone headset, I can even make all those calls in the car without violating California's hands free law and being one of the thousands ducking below the dashboard to dial.


But the Capsule is an entirely different story. I unpacked it yesterday evening, installed the necessary software on my laptop, and plugged in the Capsule to my cable modem, as expected. Then I told Time Machine to find it, and start my first backup to the device.

It failed, saying, "the backup disk image could not be created".


So I checked out the settings and tried different things. I had the Capsule run the wireless network. I even tried plugging into the device directly, using Ethernet. No dice. And if I tried to drag and drop any files to the Capsule from my laptop over the network, they failed too. So, I took a paper clip, reset it to factory settings and started over. More shades of fail.

Try after try... failed.

Today, a friend on FriendFeed suggested that maybe the Time Capsule wasn't to blame, but instead, that my hard drive might have some permission issues. So, I tried that too. Why not?


Trying again this evening, I thought I had more luck, as the backup was "Preparing" for some time. But it too failed, saying "An error occurred while creating the backup directory."

Wandering through Apple's support forums shows I'm not the only person who has had issues like this, but after years of expecting Apple's product quality and simplicity to be a cut above the rest, I'm, like others, growing a little fatigued by products that don't just work right away, or making one of many trips to the Genius Bar to replace batteries, frayed power adapters, or laptop hinges.

I haven't yet decided how long I'm going to keep pushing to try and make this product work, but if it doesn't end up working out, and I end up returning it to the Apple Store, I'm not so sure I'm getting another one. I'm on Apple products all day long, so getting the entire experience down right is a must. I'm geeky enough that just getting an Apple product to work for me shouldn't be this hard.

The LDS/Facebook Rumor Didn't Pass the Common Sense Test

In the absence of news, there's nothing the blogosphere loves more than an unfounded, nonsensical rumor, especially if two visible, but often misunderstood, parties are involved. I was amusingly dumbfounded this afternoon to find that today's rumor du jour settled on the idea that the LDS (or Mormon) Church had made an offer to acquire the hot social networking site, Facebook. While some, knowing only a mote of data about the church, suggested Facebook's strong database of familial interconnects would fall in line with the Mormon's well-known efforts in family history, the rumor was laughable on its face, which had me going from blog to blog saying it was complete bunk - which it of course, turned out to be.

See the nonsense here:

The Industry Standard:
LDS church rumored to have offered for Facebook
Venture Beat:
Rumor from the news doldrums of August: Mormon church trying to buy Facebook
WinExtra: The Mormon Church Looking To Buy Facebook?

As a life-long Mormon, I've grown used to people coming to conclusions about what the church does, stands for, or how its members behave. And despite the church being more open and active on the Web than almost any other faith out there, that I can think of, there are still pieces that remain mysterious, leading people to speculate well beyond reality. And today's rumor was just too juicy for people to pass up - and was more reminiscent of the Twitter-fed rumor that Subway's Jared had died than anything smacking of real journalism.

Whether it's a religious group, a person's country of origin, their race, their age or their gender, people have a tendency to make generalizations based on what they've seen through interacting with others, through what they've learned through the media and books, or been told about from friends or family.

When I tell people I'm Mormon, I'm often assumed to have a short haircut, wear a white shirt and tie, avoid cigarettes, coffee, tea, alcohol, drugs, and caffeine. Taking it a step further, people guess I probably spent good time in Utah, that I probably have 8 to 12 brothers and sisters, that I served a two year mission, that I likely graduated from BYU, married early and would have more than one wife if the laws were just a little more flexible.

At other times, I'll get the "You're Mormon? Really? But you're so normal!", which both gives me a sense of relief, but makes me feel somewhat guilty that I wasn't so exemplary a church member that it would have been obvious.

But while I can take the one by one issues with people who are ignorant, or just curious, today's rumor that the church would use a good portion of its estimated $30 billion cash horde to acquire a social networking site best known for poking and sending zombies to bite you was completely off the wall, and anybody who had any real knowledge about the church's mission had to have been giggling, knowing it had no basis whatsoever.

As a tithe-paying member, 10% of my total take-home income is donated to the church. While I don't dictate how the church uses my money, any more than I tell the government how to spend my tax dollars, I know that the funds are used to build new chapels and temples worldwide, to support the church's extensive welfare program that helps families in need, and to provide service in times of disaster. The church was extremely visible in aiding victims of the 2001 terrorist attacks, in responding to the South Pacific tsunami, and was instrumental in responding to Hurricane Katrina. In fact, the church's well-orchestrated service arm is so strong, that other faiths will often work with the LDS church while encouraging their own members to provide donations in times of strife.

And this has nothing to do with buying any social network.

In regards to the intimations by some that this was some scheme to lop a massive database into the church's genealogical archives, that too made no sense. As members, we are encouraged to pursue our family history and look backward to our ancestors, but we can only submit names of those with whom we are relatives. We don't submit friends' or celebrities' data, and we're certainly not out there buying lists to do a mass import.

But, clearly, not everybody knows this, and that can only be due to a lack of trying to understand.

The LDS church, whether you believe their doctrine or not, has done an amazing job at providing materials for visitors to understand their goals, their current events and their curriculum. Not only do they provide every word of their scriptures, including Book of Mormon, the Bible and all cross-references and footnotes online, and make them searchable, but they stream their semi-annual meetings online, they provide all church magazines going back to 1971, in full text, online, and all curriculum materials. This means any Web surfer can know this week's Sunday School lessons or see the church leadership's comments on world events. And all texts available to rank and file church members are visible to any site visitor.

Yet somehow, the church is seen as mysterious. Even though the church is among the fastest growing worldwide, and all these resources are available, the fact there are denominational differences and behavioral differences between the church and its members, makes people wonder if there's more to the story. That's partly why today's rumor took off like it did. Eric Eldon of VentureBeat wrote, "It got legs because it was so ridiculous, yet intriguing."

It was at least ridiculous. The good news is that, as church members, we've seen this kind of annoying misunderstanding before. It's the same kind of herd mentality that associates the church with the HBO series "Big Love", the same ignorance that linked the church with the odd polygamist sect in Texas earlier this year, or those who forced Mitt Romney's hand, making him do a pronouncement on religion earlier this year. It seems that no matter how many questions we answer, or how open we are, people would prefer not to understand and recognize that the church and its members are not secretly plotting to buy out the Web, and we aren't trying to take over the world. While Duncan Riley of the Inquisitr was good enough to have a little fun with it, many of his sources were of course from anti-Mormon sites or incorrect material, which he's not faulted for finding. And others didn't even do the basics of a simple Web search to understand how to contact church authorities and find the truth.

As one fellow member wrote me on e-mail today, "These guys are not drunk, they are smoking something really strong. It may be a slow day, but that does not mean they need to break the word of wisdom. If they are not smoking it they should at least not inhale."

See Also:
Being Mac. Being Mormon. It's Quite Similar.
Mormon. Liberal. Not Conflicted.

Why the Embargo Process Is Broken and Why We Still Need It

In the world of public relations, press management and blogging, an embargo sets a date and time by which a story can be written. Often, the embargo date and time coincides with a press release from the company, a Web site refresh, or the product's availability. Assuming all goes well, an embargo restricts all outlets from publishing a story until all is ready, and assuming multiple parties have been briefed, you can expect a waterfall of stories and press coverage to flow in a short period of time.


But, as you know, any time humans are involved, things can go awry, especially, as you see often in the blogosphere, you have a large number of media outlets that cover similar spaces, and a scarcity of topics. The resulting clamor to be heard amongst the noise, when so many different people are writing very similar stories, makes for an environment where the slightest bit of mistrust can turn into a simmering feud, or outright frustrating and finger-pointing, be it at a competitive blog, or the people behind the service being launched. Add in to the mix a rising number of inexperienced writers, prone to mistakes, with high levels of visibility, and this can happen with some regularity.

To start, why would a company ask for an embargo?

1. To be sure a product would not be pre-announced before it was ready.
2. To prepare and have enough time to brief all interested parties.
3. To ensure no favoritism was shown to any media outlet.

Why would media/press/bloggers agree to an embargo?

1. If they wouldn't agree, the company might not give them the story.
2. Because an embargo often comes with news ahead of time, allowing time for writing.
3. The service might have given them an interesting non-standard angle.

At an enterprise company, a media and analyst tour typically consists of a series of face to face meetings, plus conference calls, with an agreed upon date for a press release that coincides with the product's launch. Reporters often are looking for customer references and analyst references to validate the company's claims or add a wrinkle to the story.

For more bare-bones operations, including startups focused in the Web space, face to face meetings are less necessary. Sometimes, a series of e-mails, with potential for a phone call, is all that's needed. That's why you, on most blogs, rarely see quotes from a company's executives or customers, even if they had an extensive beta. Most bloggers, even if they have tested a product themselves, are echoing a press release or e-mail introduction from the service's founder. Again, a date is usually referenced in the e-mail to "go live".

Sounds good. Right? So why do these nicely laid plans fall apart?

On the company side:

1. Sometimes an embargo is for "everybody except one or two publications", who are allowed to break it.
2. Sometimes the Web site or company blog can go live before the embargo, in effect, scooping themselves.
3. Sometimes a story isn't all that much of a secret, and things leak to the point there's no reason for an embargo.

On the media/blog side:

1. Going first is seen as being "special", even if it's a matter of minutes.
2. Being first can make the originating blog get more attention and linkage, or prominence on sites like Techmeme.
3. Some blog management systems aren't fool-proof, enabling stories to go "before their time".

Clearly, you have some juxtaposed issues. The company launching an announcement would benefit from being covered by the most publications as possible, seen by the highest number of people. This is augmented by a need to be seen by publications with a high level of prestige. (Think Wall Street Journal, News.com, eWeek, TechCrunch, etc.) But there's something of a magnetic pull on press or blogs to go early, whether that's at midnight on the day of launch, or by posting five minutes before an embargo is lifted, and simply moving the timestamp, as has been known to happen. Blogs and press publications get a lot of visibility through gaining exclusives, and even if the same announcement has been sent to a wide audience, to hit the "post" button a little early, getting the word out first makes you appear more "in the know".

Whether intentional or not, blogs are rewarded for breaking embargoes, even if it hurts the launching service. And there's rarely any level of repercussion, as competing blogs in the know of the embargo are not naming names.

Of late, I've seen a healthy dose of complaining by some bloggers that other blogs have willingly or unwillingly violated an agreed-upon embargo. Yet, interestingly, it's a rare person who will name the offending party, even after their activity has clearly irked them.

See for instance:

Svetlana Gladkova of Profy:
"Very-very angry. Is it impossible to run a blog without breaking embargoes these days???"
08:23 PM August 18, 2008

Allen Stern of CenterNetworks:

"wtf is up with the broken embargoes this past week - 3 today, 5 in the last week - im feeling like busting out a video tonight"
06:32 PM August 18, 2008

Marshall Kirkpatrick of ReadWriteWeb:
"PR just called to say that mainstream media guy broke embargo, lol. you can't trust those mainstream media types with embargoes!"
02:18 PM August 15, 2008

Notice how even though they claim frustration and anger, nobody says who the offending parties are...

Embargoes serve a real purpose for the company making the announcement. They are there to build time to polish the product, to enable true beta testing, to set up press activity with multiple targets, and to get one's message distributed. Embargoes serve a purpose for the blogging community, for those who choose to follow them, to help guide an editorial calendar, or to be sure you're also talking about a story on the day of its debut. And while some people might wish they disappear, it's not going to happen, so long as companies look to synchronize their internal and external activity.

As we see a rise in the total number of bloggers writing on the same topics, the issue of some sites trying to get out a step ahead of others isn't going to go away. Those that play by the rules and follow the agreed-upon embargoes, are on occasion, going to get burned. But what doesn't help the situation is that nobody is making a list and checking it twice. Why complain if nobody is going to name names? If there are one, two, three or ten blogs that regularly break an embargo, and it's clear there is a pattern, it should be visible, and these sites should be avoided by companies like the plague.

I believe in and honor embargoes. I also love exclusives, and think that there is more than one way to launch a product. But this practice is tried and true, so long as we have more transparency. What disincentive is there for bloggers who break embargoes if nobody steps up?

NewsCred Launches With Two Critical Supporters

NewsCred, a site aimed to bring "all the world's credible news in one place", went live today, offering news junkies the ability to not only catch up with the day's events, but also to select their sources of information, and rate their credibility. In theory, one could grade a media outlet up or down, and the crowd's input could highlight whether a source for news was trustworthy or not.

The service has already gained substantial coverage, including from TechCrunch, Profy and Mathew Ingram, for starters, but more importantly, the service clearly values not only the community's opinion, but the community at large.

Witness their outreach to two of the world's future newsmakers, Matthew and Sarah Gray:



As Shafqat of NewsCred wrote me earlier today, "WOW. That is possibly the best thing to happen to us all day. Thank you for putting everything in perspective - they are adorable and we're thrilled to be able to share our launch with your kids!"

So it is possible to launch new products and make friends with the community at the same time, by having fun and stay credible too. Now go check out NewsCred or one of these babies will have a tantrum!

Specialized Perceived Value Trumps Real World Value

If you've attended college, or at least know somebody who has, you know that students are willing to pay hundreds of dollars a term for some of the most mind-numbing texts alive. Students will wait in line for hours, or go store to store to acquire these textbooks, which might only be available in one location, knowing that to not pay these exorbitant prices and, therefore, miss out on the texts, could lead to lower marks, and potentially, decreased success in school and just maybe post-school, could be disastrous.

But these same books, worth hundreds of dollars to an individual, are worth absolutely nothing to me. You couldn't get me to take those blasted tomes for free - because to me, they have no value. They would clutter up my house, and I'd probably never open them up. (Of course, I didn't open most of them in college, and that's a different story.)

Outside of the world of publicly traded companies and market caps, the value of a service is very much like these same textbooks. What might have ultimate value to one person may have no value to another.

Just imagine dropping off iPhones in the Amazonian jungle or Sub-Saharan Africa, where 3G is a lot less important than three meals a day. Think about the plans of the last few decades of delivering one computer per classroom, when class capacities were ballooning to nearly forty students. After a while, it's clear, there's a gap between one person's perceived value, and that item's actual value. The same, is of course true with online services.

Ever try to explain social media or social networking services to people who don't rapidly take to putting their lives online? It's a tough road, especially if they don't have friends who use those services, and see keeping their online life updated as a significant time sink. But to someone who is fully engaged and has thousands of followers or friends at some of the popular services, even minutes of downtime are alarming.

Students who buy these overpriced, one time use only textbooks, and actually read them, are doing so with the expectation that their future lives will be bettered through investment today.

Similarly, I believe that taking the time to blog, or read RSS feeds, and engage with peers on Twitter or FriendFeed or SocialMedian can improve my experience today and tomorrow. Through these services, I've learned new things, I've shared ideas, and helped others. I've found new friends and peers.

It's not always clear how investment of time and energy in social media will benefit you in the long run. As Robert Seidman mentioned in a post here over the weekend, activity on social media landed friend Hutch Carpenter a new job. And since engaging on this blog, I've started receiving a good number of opportunities to meet interesting people, to speak at or attend conferences, and to help contribute to some cutting-edge services.

This weekend, I walked my mother through some of the services I use, and while there was some interest, most of the response was "why would I do that?" or "how would I find other friends who use these things?" Not every service is built for every individual. It's likely the Facebook application developers who are finding themselves snapped up for nine-figure sums would never have gained traction with a significant portion of the market, who saw their products had no value. It's likely many of the services I use every day won't be seen as having value to others. But the important thing is that to some portion of the population, they are crucial. The game is finding out which part of the population it is, and working to make that target larger.

The iPhone Cannot Be The End. So What's Next?

My Mobile Phone Progression: What's Coming?
When I go into work on Tuesday, one of the first things I plan to do is turn in my Blackberry, and begin the process of porting my cell phone number over to the iPhone. Within days, I expect I'll be Blackberry free for the first time in about five years. But this isn't the first cell phone product transition, and it certainly won't be the last, for me. While the iPhone, for many today, represents the "ultimate" in cell phones, something will take its place, just as has been played out time and again as technology evolves.

As users, we tend to gravitate to a specific platform and declare it the "best" or the "winner", supporting it fanatically, buying proprietary applications, and demanding everything we use synchronize with it. It's what we're doing today with the iPhone, it's what we did with the Blackberry before it, and previously, the Palm OS. Even today, I could probably write out the alphabet in Graffiti if handed a stylus.

But to pick up a Blackberry today already seems antiquated, and, with luck, even though it's been a great platform, I may not ever have one again. If I were to bring out a Handspring Visor or a Palm III or Palm V, I'd be hearkening back to the days of tech's yesteryear. And God bless those poor souls who would love to show you the capabilities of their Apple Newton. There's just no saving them.

In the fun of going through the iTunes App Store and getting new applications and games with basic features, including a bowling application, Tetris, and Bejewled, it struck me as having something of deja vu to it - as I had downloaded similar games and apps for Blackberry, and for Palm before, and maybe for a Sony Ericsson I owned for a short time. Yes, the applications are getting better, and taking advantage of new technology like multi-touch and GPS or WiFi, but once again, I'm buying apps for a single platform that I think is the best at the time.

So, in three or five years time, as the iPhone has evolved, or been replaced, by Apple or others, will I still be using those applications? Probably not. Will I again be buying the same applications but on a new platform? Probably.

The fact is that there are a finite number of developers and an increasing number of places to deploy these applications. We've heard stories of what Google's Android platform will or won't be, and we've heard how developers are happy, or aren't, or how they're switching instead to write for the iPhone. Where those applications may at one time have been debated to write for Macintosh or Windows, you now also have the option to write for Windows Mobile, for Blackberry, for Android, for the iPhone, for Facebook, for Flash or for Java, to deploy on the Web, or any of the game consoles - the Playstation, the Wii, the XBox, and their portable derivatives.

Evolution always pushes forward, on the desktop, on the Web, or, in this case, in the world of mobile handhelds. And it's very rare for a single company to be the leader for more than three to five years. The Microsoft desktop monopoly has been protected for parts of three decades now, legally and illegally, and they've never achieved the same level of success in the world of handsets, as much as they wish they could. Should we expect that Apple will coddle their lead on the iPhone, as they carefully massaged their leadership with the iPod, or will they rise to this pinnacle, only to see it eroded away by one of the current players, or someone new? It takes more than developing the world's best mobile phone experience. It also takes coddling and rewarding of a vast development community to pick you ahead of all others.

As a consumer, I've won with each move. I won by going from land line to mobile phone. I won by going from a pager to my Hanspring Visor with the VisorPhone. I won by going from the VisorPhone to a Blackberry. And so far, I'm sure moving from the Blackberry to the iPhone. The question is, will my next move, in a few years, be off the iPhone, or simply to a newer model?

Google Has Leveled the Internet Playing Field

By Robert Seidman of TVbytheNumbers (Twitter / FriendFeed)

There are many motivations to write something and publish it on the Internet. Some write in hopes of making money, others like Louis, write because they want to be a part of something they enjoy, others like Hutch Carpenter find their next job. But I believe whether it's Duncan Riley, Louis or Hutch the common denominator is this: they want their voices to be heard.

It's a Very Different Landscape Than 1994…
A very low barrier to entry brings with it some blessings and some curses. The more people who participate, the better things are for everyone in the aggregate. But the more people participating, the harder it is to compete and have your voice rise up above the cacophony of all the other voices.

During my first foray into Internet publishing in the fall of 1994, the landscape was dramatically different. I launched a newsletter essentially summarizing the big events of the week in the online/Internet space. At the time of launch, my only competition was for-fee subscription content. There was no freely-available competition and as a result, I gained access to readers and industry insiders very quickly. Fortunately, Robert Scoble was writing about visual basic or something at the time, so I didn't have to compete with his bullhorn either.

I first met Bill Gorman, who I now run TVbytheNumbers with, within two months of launching my 1990s Internet publication. Bill was an executive at AOL, who helped launch America Online's international division. Around the same time, Bill started reading what I was writing, so did the person who was running AOL – Steve Case. Basically within two months of launching I was reaching high-ranking industry insiders.

…But It's Still Possible to Get Your Voice Out There
Today, if you were to launch a blog on social network services and hoping to get Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook to read it, I believe that task would be about 10,000 times more difficult. The likes of Louis, however, are proving that it's not impossible to write about companies you're interested in and gain 'inside' access. It may not be on the scale of Facebook executives for Louis (yet), but gaining insider access is certainly something he's accomplished to the point where he's now taken an advisory role with ReadBurner.

Louis might seem like an 'overnight success' story to many in the blogging circles, but not to me. What I see is a kid who has been plugging away since January 2006 and really started to get some traction by late 2007, which has accelerated greatly during 2008. Thirty-two months of plugging away to get where he is today isn't an overnight success story. It is a success story, but it is a success story that involved a lot of hard work, persistence and determination.

All Good Things…
The other day I brought up my FriendFeed and saw the link "Robert Seidman Quoted in NY Post On Phelps/Olympics" posted by none other than Louis. It was the first I'd heard of it. Although we have talked to reporters from the NY Post (and other publications) I hadn't talked to them about this. They'd just lifted the quote right out of a blog post and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Although getting quoted is nice, especially when quotes are just lifted off blog posts, the thing I was most proud of for the week was seeing this story comparing the minutes of online streaming to the minutes of viewing via traditional television pop-up in my Google Reader. An analyst working at Fox television crunched some numbers on top of some numbers I'd crunched in a blog post and Fox's PR team circulated it, citing our blog as the original source.

It's not lost on me that mostly happened because the song I was singing, "TV is still king", was a tune the people at the television networks really love to hear. But in a world where we're in some ways competing with Variety, Advertising Age, The Hollywood Reporter, Media Week, TV Week, The New York Times and the USA Today, to wind up having my thoughts on the subject heard was extremely gratifying. In some ways I'm in awe that the playing field is still level enough for that to happen.

Thanks Google!

I know a lot in the tech blogging circles will opine on whether Google is good or evil. For now in my mind, Google is still good. It leveled the playing field for us. We have little in the way of expense overhead (almost $0, really) and sure, it may work out that I've made about eight cents per hour, but that's the subject for another blog post. From my perspective, we are allowed to compete, and compete fairly without spending anything on marketing. It's hard for me to find fault with a system that provides that sort of level playing field.

Organic Google search (including Google News) is our number one traffic source. This leads to a lot of referral traffic from other sites and a good bit of the direct traffic.

A level playing field does not mean it's easy to get your voice heard, in fact, one of the best ways to compete in a very level playing field is with a lot of hard work. This may not equate directly to riches or fame, but if those were your goals the odds were already stacked against you before you started and you knew it.

Ultimately though, having your voice heard can lead to other very cool opportunities. Ask Louis, or Hutch, or even me. The best job I ever had, as a Senior Vice President at Charles Schwab running various portions of its online brokerage (from 1998-2003) came at least indirectly, and mostly directly, in my opinion, as a result of having my voice heard on the Internet. That was a lot easier to achieve in those heady pre-Google days, but even in this vastly more competitive era, Google does a great job leveling the playing field.

P.S. because I didn't think many FriendFeeders are interested in TV Metrics, I stopped feeding our blog into my FriendFeed stream and created a separate one here.

It Still Has That New iPhone 3G Smell

As promised late last night, this morning started off by finally going out and getting an iPhone. I ignored all the common sense and all the excuses, drank my fanboy Kool-Aid, and made my way to the nearby Apple Retail store, looking to possibly leave my life of Blackberry behind and start anew with the world's most coveted gadget. By the time I left the store, I not only had the iPhone 3G, but also a 500 Gigabyte Time Capsule, a new iPhone 3G case with belt clip, and a line-in adapter for the car. There's no question, at least for one day, Cupertino is happy with me.

As you can imagine, the first few hours of iPhone ownership are less about being functional, and more about syncing data, and trying out all the new widgetry.

Luckily for me, iTunes smartly asked if I wanted to restore the settings and data from my iPod Touch to the iPhone. This set things in motion so all the purchased iTunes App Store programs were moved over, along with my e-mail accounts, photos, and music. In fact, if it wasn't for the iPhone's new shape and the Phone application itself, it'd be pretty easy to forget I made a change.

I haven't yet decided what I'm going to do with my now two phone numbers. It's tempting to get rid of the old number and start new with AT&T, and also tempting to never use the new number, migrating the old to the new phone. That's why, at least for now, I don't plan on giving anybody the number for the iPhone. But that doesn't mean I'm not messing around with it. I found myself taking random photos, and sending useless SMS messages just to prove I could. I sent a photo taken with the iPhone via e-mail, again, just because I could.

In Folsom, where we're staying with my family for an extended weekend, we've had spotty 3G access. Sometimes it's on, and sometimes, Edge shows up, so I haven't been testing speed, but it does exactly as I would expect. The iPhone downloaded all my e-mail from the Mobile Me, GMail and Exchange servers quickly, and Internet browsing is at least as fast as it was on the iPod Touch.

Like any good new toy tool, it's tempting to just find reasons to get it out, or to wear it prominently, just so people know I have one. It's tempting to bring it out in the middle of dinner, to find an answer to a question in conversation, or to use it instead of the laptop, just because I can. It's like having a new car and getting excited just to drive down to the market and pick up milk and eggs. But the necessary transition has occurred. Last night, I went to bed as a non-iPhone owner, and tonight, I have joined the club. Looking forward to moving on from the novice to expert stage.

Is There Less Funding Or Are Startups Just Cheaper?

By Rob Diana of Regular Geek (Twitter/FriendFeed)


As an early adopter, I have an interest in startups. As a software developer and a developer of Web sites and services, I have additional interest in funding and the whole entrepreneur idea. Because of this, I tend to read a few "business" blogs as well as the usual technical fare. One of these blogs is A VC. Recently, Fred Wilson started writing a series of posts on the venture fund economics that is amazing. If you are trying your hand at a startup, I highly recommend you start looking at these posts. Just getting a fundamental understanding of the VC process is helpful in determining whether VC funding is worthwhile to your startup. In his Venture Fund Economics post he concludes with a very interesting point:

Some will read this and suggest that our business is all about swinging for the fences. But I don't think so. There are hitters in baseball, the best hitters in fact, that hit balls out of the park when they are just trying to make good contact. That's how you have to do it in the venture business. You try to make 20 great investments and you work with them closely in hopes that four years in you have six or seven that have home run potential, and after ten years, you maybe hit one or two out of the park. If you try to hit every one out of the park day one, you'll strike out way too much and the fund won't work out very well.

I think this logic can also be applied to startups in general. If you always try to do something that will turn out to be a home run, you will strike out too much. In the technology world, a home run would be a Google competitor, an iPhone competitor or even a Facebook competitor.

So, what if you are just trying to make contact? We have already heard in various places that venture funding is hard to get in general, and even harder in today's economy. Is this discouraging startups? Or are the startups focusing on the "major" technical hub cities? Paul Kedrosky must have been thinking this recently when he found that California is not a big entrepreneur state. Granted this is just an analysis using Google Insights for Search, but it does yield some interesting information. I was not enamored with the search terms that Paul used, so I tried a different set (entrepreneur, startup, venture capital and funding) and found some really interesting results.


Google Insight: Entrepreneur, Startup, Venture Capital and Funding
Interestingly enough, entrepreneur is not a big search term compare to startup or funding. Initially I thought this could be due to the generic nature of these terms, but the locations tend to match up with significant technical presences. As you can see from the chart, there is an obvious downward trend for all of the search terms. We can assume that this is due to the economy because if you read TechCrunch, Mashable or ReadWriteWeb, you will see plenty of Web sites getting initial startup coverage. In any economy like the one we are in currently, investments suffer and people invest less. Therefore it is likely that venture capitalists are being much more careful regarding what they invest in. Many people wanting to be an entrepreneur are probably taking less risks as well. So, we could be seeing a rise in startups being a weekend job until revenue or major funding becomes a reality.

However, some of these startups do require some significant money in order to operate on a daily basis because cloud computing is not free. Are people getting more angel funding? Following the same logic as the entrepreneur search, I compared the search terms angel investor and angel funding.


Google Insight: Angel Investor and Angel Funding
Here you can see that angel investor and funding have flat or slightly rising trends. Again there is a definite relation to the major technical locations and the "interest" of searches. Given the trend lines for the "angel" search terms and the comparison to the previously explained trends, it does look like there is more interest in angel funding.

Why would we be seeing this difference in trends, besides the economy? Well, many of the newer web services do not require major hardware infrastructure in order to get started. Cloud computing and even cheap hosting make the hardware investment something that can be put off until there is a true need. Using the cloud is also very cost effective initially because you do not need to hire a server or network administrator. This is all handled for you by the cloud provider. The cloud also gives you the ability to handle spikes in traffic signifcantly better than with a traditional hosting provider. Given these reduced costs, a good round of $100,000 of angel financing could fund a startup for two years. At that point, there could be real revenue being generated or even a venture captial funding round. Money is easier to raise when you are a somewhat proven startup compared to when you first start and only have a few thousand page views per month.

It looks like the combination of the economy, cloud computing and the generally lower technical barrier for new services is creating a new environment for startups. People are finding cheaper ways to get started. Startups are also using the existing information on the web to define more interesting services. So, what is coming next and where do we go from here?

YooPlace Captures Twitter's Top Conversations, Lets You Reply

With Twitter's tweaking its API limits, you've seen a virtual tug of war between the popular microblogging service and the many different sites that have sprung up to capture the most discussed links and topics. In the last few months, we've seen sites like AlphaTwitter and Tweetmeme arrive, each finding middling success. But quietly, a new service called YooPlace is looking to not only show popular discussions, capturing all matter of shortened URL services to resolve back to a single original, but also setting you up to reply, either to the original tweet, or any of those that have followed suit.

On Friday, Jesse Stay highlighted Twitter's ability to enable threaded comments, a feature long desired, and one that could eventually see the disappearance of the omnipresent @ symbol used to connect users. While it might be some time until we see that on Twitter directly, YooPlace has designed their site to make conversations by way of Twitter seem threaded.


YooPlace Is Like Twitter Meets Hacker News.
The YooPlace main site looks a lot like the popular Hacker News, complete with tan background, items showing rank by number, and even a triangle on the left by each item in the same font. Clicking on the triangle, like in Hacker News, votes the story up a point, presumably higher in the rankings. But most of the scoring comes from the tweets themselves, which are shown as "comments". The first Twitter user to post the URL is shown as the originator, even if they are not the blog author themselves. Clicking the "comments" link displays all the following tweets, as well as their avatars, with the ability to respond in line.


A Popular Item from YooPlace
As you would expect, the most popular items ranked by YooPlace are blog posts from popular blogs, including TechCrunch, Engadget, and Mashable. But there are also tweets that call out recent earthquakes, political news, and the Olympics. You can also see the items which hit the top of YooPlace by following YooPlaceTop on Twitter.


You Can Reply From Within YooPlace
The author of YooPlace is Thomas Bikeev, a Belgian, who tips his hat to Hacker News as inspiration for YooPlace, and saying the data is provided by Twitter's API as well as Twitter Search (formerly Summize).

Ranking popular topics on Twitter has been done before, and the magic formula to "get it right" is still eluding folks. But I really like the ability to click on comments and see just who said what about the topic, as well as aggregating the different URL shorteners. With so many new ones cropping up, it can get easy to miss who is talking about your posts or a specific issue. And the fact you can respond in line is very interesting. We'll see if YooPlace can do more than the others have, and get real traction with the new features before Hacker News sues them and wants their interface back.

When it Comes to the iPhone, Never Assume Rationality

As far as the iPhone is concerned, I have failed in my role as an early adopter. Two generations into Apple's delivering the most talked about cell phone in history, I as an Apple aficionado practically have a legal obligation to not only have one, but to have more than one. But even today, I do not. I've instead slogged along with a previous-generation BlackBerry, and a first-generation iPod Touch, arguing that in combination, the two provide just about everything the iPhone would give me. Add on to that fact that I've had my phone service paid for and the BlackBerry provided for from work, and it makes for enough good excuses not to join the iPhone faithful.

But in hours, it's likely this all comes to an end, despite all my protests.

Armed with a coupon to the Apple Store, courtesy of Social Median, I have every intention to get up at the crack of dawn Saturday, and with my sister, an Apple Store retail employee herself, go in to buy an iPhone 3G. She knows her store has hundreds, and we want to beat the line.

What do I get from the iPhone 3G that the iPod Touch doesn't have? Well, aside from the entire functionality of the phone itself, I also get a camera, and Internet anywhere - not just in range of WiFi. It's this last part that really hits home, to be honest. I know the camera's not the best in the world, though I'll love always having one in my pocket. But I really, really, want "real Internet" with me wherever I go, even though 90+% of the time, I'm within range of WiFi, whether I'm at home, at work or anywhere else. What I really want is the ability to just pick up the iPhone from the supermarket, or from the A's game, or in that small percentage of places where WiFi wasn't enough.

Even with this added functionality, I still have the issue of paying AT&T where to date, I've let work pick up the tab. Maybe I expense my monthly bills, if they go for it. Maybe I say goodbye to my current phone number and start over with a new one. And maybe I transfer my old number to the new iPhone and keep the number that, for now anyway, belongs to the corporation and not little me.

It's not rational, to be honest. I've heard the horror stories of people struggling to get good 3G access, or of battery issues. I've heard rumors of Apple even recalling the iPhone 3G, which would be an unquestioned public relations and business disaster. I'm staring in the face of almost $1,000 in phone bills, where there were none before. Yet... it somehow feels right. It's what I'm supposed to do. I can't take the gift certificate from Social Median, which was intended for a new iPhone 3G and put it toward a Time Capsule, which I'm also thinking of getting. That'd break an unwritten rule. While I held out for so long, for me anyway, the wait will soon be over, as I fling off the shackles of responsibility and head to the Apple Store like a lemming. Can't wait.

Twitter Implements Threaded Comments, Sort Of

By Jesse Stay of Stay N' Alive (Identi.ca/FriendFeed)

Today Twitter made a quiet announcement on their developer mailing list that could have profound implications. On the mailing list, Alex Payne, a leading developer at Twitter gave the following announcement:

"I'm happy to announce a minor change to the API that should have a major impact on the Twitter community. The /statuses/update method now takes an optional parameter: in_reply_to_status_id. As you might guess, this allows API clients to specify which status a status to be posted is in reply to, rather than our system assuming that it's in reply to the last message posted by the user specified by "@username". "

What does this mean? Essentially now any Twitter client can now associate another post as a reply to another existing post. This means that Twhirl or TweetDeck can allow a user to post a normal status update, and provide a "+" sign underneath (or "@" similar to the Twhirl FriendFeed client), and a new post can be appended as a reply to the previous post.

What's very interesting though is that Twitter is not requiring "in_reply_to_status_id" requests to have an "@" symbol in them. Therefore, this could very well mean the death of "@'s" on Twitter as more and more clients begin to fully implement the API call. Twitter seems to be breaching FriendFeed territory on this one, if they could just start allowing better aggregation.

I expect to fully see new implementations of this feature very soon - the request is quite simple, and would just take some simple UI enhancements. Twhirl I know has these built in already to their FriendFeed client - they would just need to utilize the same code and they would have it in the Twitter client. Now the question becomes, will Twitter's API limits allow this feature to work? It will be interesting to watch.

Transparency, Disclosure and Opening Up the Kimono

On Wednesday, I was pleased to announce my beginning a new, formal, relationship with the ReadBurner team as an advisor, where I'll be looking to help provide guidance and strategy and be more of a colleague with the already-successful team, who is looking to make the site a one-stop destination to find the most popular content online, today starting with RSS feeds, and maybe tomorrow, much, much more. Who knows?

In advance of this announcement, I reached out to a pair of folks who I perceive to be competitors of ReadBurner, and told them exactly what the plan was - that I was going to be helping ReadBurner out, and that I wasn't going to be paid, but instead, would essentially have a small potential equity stake, just like any employee, advisor or board member at a private company. ReadBurner's success, essentially, could be my success as well, should the stars be aligned.

Crossing the chasm from a completely neutral party to a biased party, or at least having the perception of bias, isn't something I'm used to. My enthusiasm for ReadBurner, as well as my enthusiasm for FriendFeed, AssetBar, Social Median, Feedly, Ballhype and other services over the last few years, has been seen here, and in each case, it has been done so without compensation, or expectation of compensation. Now that this has changed in one specific example, it of course raises questions. Will competitors of ReadBurner ever talk to me again? Will other companies try and guess where ReadBurner is headed, and trusting me less, go a different route? Maybe they will, and that's a risk that's assumed.

Only hours after my first post did I get a question like this from one developer, asking if ReadBurner should be considered competition to their work, and should they "be careful about sharing things we're working on"? Well, in all truthfulness, you should always be careful about sharing pre-release content with anyone, to start with, and second, you should always think about whether that person will have pre-conceived biases, or will be abusing your trust. And it makes sense to protect your proprietary data.

With that said, over the last few years, I have tried to be as transparent as possible, and it is important to me to be trusted. I have never written a single post on this site for pay, or in exchange for goods. I've also tried to be reachable by anyone, occasionally to my detriment. My cell phone number and personal e-mail address have been on this blog since early 2007, and even in the footer of every RSS feed. In one example where I was concerned there could be a perception of bias, I told you when I won an iPhone from Social Median and asked you to judge me to see if I unequally gave praise to the site as a result. And I expect to keep telling you if I can be found in any way to be uneven in how I view a site, person or anything else.

In 2008, especially, I've worked with developers and entrepreneurs, getting early access to sites sometimes weeks or months ahead of their roll-out, and have done so without leaking their information early, and often, worked to provide informal QA to help get their product ready for announcement, with Feedly being the best example. As I said this evening in a fun ReadBurner podcast, if I can help make the products and services we use online better, then I've done my job. I often want these products to succeed, even if I'm not their target demographic and am more than happy to keep things close to the vest, and often offer advice for free. It's what I'd been doing with ReadBurner off and on before they asked for more of my time and make it official.

But truth be told, in the online space, sites that look completely different today could look similar tomorrow. The LOUD3R family of Web sites offers many different topic-driven news aggregators, as did the Ballhype/Showhype/Beltway Blips family, each of which I covered. SocialMedian, similarly, can offer an aggregation of news on the same topics, and sites like MyBlogLog, Fav.or.it and Technorati use topics to bring similar bloggers and posts together. In theory, so could FriendFeed, ReadBurner, Feedheads or RSSmeme. And each of the last few sites could be rejiggered to take on more horizontal plays like Google News or Techmeme.

Allen Stern of CenterNetworks, on the podcast, made it clear that if he were a competitor to ReadBurner, not only would he not want to share any information with me, but he recommended to us on the call that we should be especially careful, so no entrepreneur could claim we had stolen their ideas. Allen is a smart guy whose ideas I respect, and he's right. But you shouldn't expect that overnight I'm going to start saying ReadBurner every other word and talking smack about their competitors. And I've never received anything like a confidential roadmap from anybody - so that's not an issue.

To help with clarity, I am going to add details about the ReadBurner relationship to my "About" page, and I'm going to get even more transparent so that anybody who does have questions can get those answers. There is one more small company I've been helping in an advisory role since early this Spring, and soon, they will be public, so I can talk about it, and again, be transparent. But that's in a space I don't write about, so much of the above doesn't apply.

Since starting this site, I've very visibly eschewed advertising, and haven't been making any money for what I write or where I participate. Maybe working in a consultancy or advisory role to companies like ReadBurner is where I end up "monetizing the blog", even if that isn't my sole goal for being here. As previously mentioned, I enjoy the conversations and the camaraderie, and have been doing a lot of "advising" for free for a lot of different sites. That's why I wrote "10 Suggestions to Improve Google Reader" back in March of 2007, and offered "10 More Suggestions for LinkedIn" that same month, as well as 10 Suggestions for FriendFeed last December. That's why I asked What Is the Future Of MyBlogLog?. In none of those cases were my suggestions requested or compensated, and I hope to keep thinking out loud and offering advice for free.

My activity with ReadBurner, in actuality, will be very small, compared to everything else I'm doing. But if there's ever a chance where I could be seen as being biased, or needing to disclose that relationship, I will absolutely do so, and I both expect you to and want you to keep me honest - as I've tried to be so far. And if or when I screw up, call or e-mail. Transparency is the best policy.

I've Taken a New Advisory Role With ReadBurner

If you've been a long-time reader of this blog, you'll know that one of the most frequent topics I've discussed is that of RSS readers, and innovative tools to determine "hot" or most popular items - either on a broad measure, or by specific topic or vertical. One of the most fun stories to follow, for me, this year, was the stealth debut of ReadBurner, followed by its rapid ascension into visibility, its later changing hands and continued efforts to add new features and make it a standard for determining the best content across the Web.

As of today, I'll be taking a more direct role in helping the team at ReadBurner succeed, working with them in an advisory role, where I can spend a few hours each week talking strategy.

So what does this mean for the other companies in this space, who have played a crucial role in our coverage this year, such as RSSmeme, Feedheads, and LinkRiver? To me, it doesn't change a whole lot. I've made it clear that I really like this arena, and see that it has great potential, and I've maintained a good relationship with the developers at each site.

In fact, I reached out to both Mario Romero and Ben Golub in advance of this post to let them know of our making the ReadBurner affiliation more official, in case they felt I had a new conflict of interest, or would be treating them differently going forward. As I told both of them, I would absolutely love to keep being updated and spreading the word, but understand if they felt more competitive, and if any future coverage of either will need a formal disclosure of sorts.

So why ReadBurner? Because the team of Drew Olanoff, Adam Ostrow, Thomas Connors and Alexander Marktl has recognized the potential in a democratically-oriented site that can bring the day's top news to people, regardless of its source, or its topic. They are looking to springboard ReadBurner out of the hobby phase and help it grow. I'm hoping I can help, and I'm honored they extended the opportunity.

And in case you're curious, this doesn't impact my day job, which remains the same, as outlined on LinkedIn. But even if I can help the ReadBurner team in a small way, I'm excited to try. It's already been fun watching the site grow from its infancy earlier this year.

You can follow our efforts at http://www.readburner.com/. Looking forward to updating you with more, including on the ReadBurner podcast, tonight at 10 p.m. Eastern, 7 p.m. Pacific. (Watch the official blog.)

Identi.ca and the Power of Microbranded Communities

By Jesse Stay of Stay N' Alive (Identi.ca/FriendFeed)

Identi.ca, the open source and Federated microblogging platform, could very well put Twitter out of business as other businesses begin realizing how they can adopt it. I think the answer could very well be in the "group Twitter" concept that everyone keeps talking about and the fact that Laconi.ca, the code that powers Identi.ca, makes this very easy for anyone to do.

I realized this today when Jay Ridgeway was able to show how to set up a simple Federated instance of Laconi.ca in just 7 steps. The idea behind "Federation" is that I can sign up for Identi.ca, or any other Laconi.ca-based platform and be able to follow anyone on any of the other Laconi.ca-based platforms all on my prefered service of choice. Today I began imagining how others could begin utilizing this technology - essentially it is a technology built to allow other similar systems built on the same technology to talk with each other.

Sound familiar? Laconi.ca is building an actual Protocol underneath it all where other types of software can also communicate with Laconi.ca. This would put it almost in the same realm as Sendmail, which communicates with other mail server software via the SMTP protocol, or even Apache, which communicate with other web servers via the HTTP protocol, or even Bind, which communicates with other DNS servers via the DNS protocol. I could go on and on - Evan Prodromou, the founder of Identi.ca, is not just building another microblogging service. He's developing a standard, along with software that adopts that standard so that you, too can build software that communicates with that standard! This is profound, and in my opinion we haven't seen such innovation and selfless development of new communication techniques since the invention of the web itself. Identi.ca is in many ways building an entirely new, open layer of the internet.

Federated Communities

Now, back to the groups concept. Well, actually, it's more of a small community concept I'm refering to - your business can actually build communities off of this protocol, starting with the software that Identi.ca has provided. Identi.ca and Twitter are both very broad communities. People of all types and tastes are on those services. Those services are good for that - it's a great way to build relationships, meet new people, and find information. However, there is no way currently for me to associate only with those of like tastes and culture. For instance, if I am into college football and you are not, you aren't going to be interested in the details of the games I'm watching. You may be interested though to know I have an interest in college football. So both types of communities have their place.

Now, what if ESPN were to launch a version of Laconi.ca just for sports lovers? It would just take a simple install of Laconi.ca and a little cobranding of their logo, look, and feel and soon an entire community of sports lovers would be sharing their love for sports, communicating back and forth, and showing their other sports-loving friends what they're doing in their sports-loving life. At the same time, they could still follow all of those same friends they follow over on Identi.ca and even other interest communities, all while still on the ESPN sports community, remaining on the ESPN site. Imagine if this same technique was launched for Moms, Dads, religions, or even just your local city or town?

Laconi.ca is not a service, but rather a technology, and the founder and developer, Evan, of Identi.ca I think recognizes that. We're seeing this as so many other microblogging services have come up recently, some others even open source. Identi.ca will evolve as it builds around this basic technology of microblogging and finds new ways to use it. What's great is that they're sharing the basic technology so that others can do the same and build their own creative services around the technology! (Evan was quoted as saying one of his monetization strategies is consulting on the technology he's written, so there's no doubt he expects to see others embrace it, as it's to his benefit) Add to that the shared API built around the service and the fact that any software written for Identi.ca will work on almost any other Laconi.ca platform with just the change of a host name and you can quickly see the power of Identi.ca and the software that powers it.

Twitter seems to be completely ignoring this as they shut the doors on developers, try to develop entirely in-house, and build an entirely proprietary system. Businesses will quickly realize this, build software on the Laconi.ca platform, and as the customers and communities that follow those communities flock to their platforms, they will also naturally join other supported services such as identi.ca. Users will soon have no reason to be on Twitter any more if nothing is done. I always said developers would begin the demise of Twitter, and Laconi.ca's making it awfully easy for that to happen. Unless Twitter adopts and opens up in a major way, they will fail.

In case this convinces you to switch, you can find me on identi.ca at http://identi.ca/jessestay. Join Louis at http://identi.ca/louisgray. Looking for tips on how to switch? Check out http://ohidentica.com/.

For My Next Trick, Watch This Comment Disappear!

By Cyndy Aleo-Carreira of Shakespeare I Ain't (E-mail / Twitter)

There appears to be an interesting trend appearing more often on FriendFeed: comment moderation. Users have been able to moderate comments on their own FriendFeed threads for as long as I've been using the site, and most use it to remove any spam that makes it through and trolls. But increasingly, I've seen incidents where thread owners are using the moderation feature to control the conversation and remove comments that are contrary to their stances on an issue.

This form of censorship online really isn't anything new; many sites, especially personal blogs, moderate all comments so that only those that agree with the writer. Seeing it happen on FriendFeed, however, isn't the same as seeing it on a personal blog.

The FriendFeed fans have always maintained that FriendFeed is an equalizer, giving everyone from A-listers to the most unknown tech afficianado a level playing field for conversation. The reality, however, may not be so egalitarian. I can't count the number of times in the past week I've seen comments that I read suddenly vanish, or viewed comments on a thread that don't seem to reply to anything.

I have always had a policy that anything but spam or truly offensive commentary gets put through, whether it's on my blog or a FriendFeed thread or a forum that I've hosted. There's no sense in writing anything if I'm going to silence my critics, and while I may not agree with some of the comments, if I view things only from one viewpoint, I won't learn anything, and certainly can't consider myself to have a true understanding of any issue.

I'm beginning to wonder if the ability to moderate comments on an individual basis needs to be taken away. While I appreciate the ability to moderate a comment if I really needed to, the ease with which it can be done seems to be used far too often to skew conversation and make it appear that only one point of view is the norm. When I posted this past weekend about a mob mentality resulting from group think on FriendFeed, I realized that there are many times when I just seem to have a completely different viewpoint than the one prevailing on the site. Now I wonder if I'm actually not the only one thinking a certain way, but rather, am the only one creating my own thread, or have enough visibility to not have my comments deleted.

MyBlogLog/FriendFeed Integration Fouling Up Google Vanity Searches

Practically every blogger performs regular "vanity searches" to see if they were mentioned on the Web. Some use Technorati, others, Google Blog Search, or Twitter Search. And Google has made it very easy to get alerted via e-mail if your name has been mentioned out in the blogosphere. But recent efforts by MyBlogLog's "New With Me" feature, integrated with FriendFeed, have resulted in an overflow of useless updates, whether you're searching for yourself, or anybody else active on both sites, adding a flood of noise to what used to be actionable search results.


My pre-saved Google Blog Search watches the Web for me.
In February, MyBlogLog made a big move into the lifestreaming space, by doing more than tabulating fans of your content and tagging your blog with keywords, but letting you see your friends' activity around the Web, including their participation on Twitter, Last.fm, Digg and other social sites.

In May, no doubt in response to users' requests, MyBlogLog added the ability to show FriendFeed comments and likes in their lifestream, adding the popular social aggregator as a supported service.

That sounded good on the surface. Now, by going to my MyBlogLog page, I can see activity from my "friends" on FriendFeed, as well as the other previously-supported services.


My Google Blog Search Alerts Stopped Being Useful
But then, Google Blog Search started indexing MyBlogLog's updates as equal to actual individual blog entries. This meant I started to get results in vanity searches, and those sent by e-mail for things as mundane as "Louis Gray commented" or "Louis Gray listened to a track". And it wasn't just my activity, but others. Every few hours, I would get e-mail reporting, "Spullara commented", or "Corvida shared an item", for example. If they were commenting on my items or sharing my items on FriendFeed, MyBlogLog heard about it, and told Google, who then told me.


MyBlogLog Delivers FriendFeed Activity to Google Blog Search.
Clearly, this isn't the end of the world. But it's messy, and it's taken what used to be a fairly rock-solid service, in Google Blog Search and Alerts and made it a lot less useable. While I have no doubts that I'm overweighted with this problem, thanks to being more active and visible on FriendFeed, others I tested showed the same issues, including the aforementioned Corvida, Chris Pirillo, Duncan Riley, and Sarah Perez, for example.

Some people have openly expressed concern about how services are auto-populating and aggregating outside activity, creating an echo effect. This is one of the clearest examples of unintended consequences. So what should happen? Should Google Blog Search remove MyBlogLog results, or should MyBlogLog remove FriendFeed entries? Which service should make the first move if any move is needed?

Disqus Takes Commenting to the Next Level

Over the last few months, no blogging comments engine has received as much attention, or gained as much perceived blogger momentum as has Disqus. While alternatives exist, Disqus' clean interface, tracking capabilities and the team's aggressive approach to customer support have begun to make them the alternative to standard blogging comment engines from Blogger, Wordpress and TypePad. As I previously documented, moving to Disqus has greatly improved the interactivity between me and my readers over the last few months, and I remain extremely optimistic about the company's ability to gain market share.

As many other sites have now reported, Disqus rolled out version 2 of their software today, addressing some concerns held by holdouts who believed implementing the engine would hurt their SEO rankings, while also delivering strong platform integration with Wordpress, a new developer API, and a significant reorganization of Disqus.com to deliver immediate access to an individual's comments to track and manage.

On Sunday, prior to today's announcement, I spoke with the company's CEO, Daniel Ha, who said much of today's rollout was targeting those people concerned with their comment data being externally hosted on "the cloud". The service's new API enables full synchronization between Disqus and your local comments database (for Wordpress and Moveable Type only today), which has a side benefit of working well with search engines, such as Google.

Most interesting to me in today's announcement are the changes at Disqus.com. As I've discussed before, comments are often made, and as Disqus comments can flow to e-mail, to FriendFeed, or other lifestreaming services, context becomes crucial. Now, each registered Disqus user has a personal "comment blog", which can show previous comments, as well as replies, to provide context. For example, you can see mine here: http://disqus.com/people/louismg/

Disqus is now installed at more than 30,000 Web sites. When I asked Ha about the service's penetration in markets outside the typically insular tech blogging community, he said, "We have a very great presence in the tech blogger segment, but the most prolific discussions come on political and finance blogs. There is a lot of heavy usage back and forth."

Disqus, which held a party this most recent Saturday at their new office, employs three people full time, with an intern, who will be leaving the company at the end of the summer, much to Daniel's dismay.

The blog comments space is not one where Disqus has a monopoly yet, by any means. SezWho and Intense Debate have a good following, as does WordPress, of course, but today's developments raise the bar yet again for competition as Disqus becomes more entrenched as the standard.

GMail and Apple's MobileMe Holding an Outage Contest

Apple's replacement for .Mac, MobileMe, has been roundly mocked for its spotty uptime since rollout last month, drawing the company's CEO, Steve Jobs to apologize for the lack of quality in an internal memo. But even following an internal reorganization and the public thrashing, users, including me, were unable to access their e-mail for a good portion of the afternoon - even as the company's MobileMe Status page shows no updates since the end of July.

Not to be outdone, the most popularly cited alternative to MobileMe, Google's GMail, has also suffered outages this afternoon, locking its many users out of their e-mail, again, including me.


At the beginning of the issues with MobileMe Mail, Apple famously said the outages were only impacting a small 1 percent of users, despite widespread complaints throughout the Web. Today's outage, which Apple reported lasted about a half hour, cited only that "MobileMe members were unable to access MobileMe mail", so that indicates a full outage.

GMail, on the other hand, says, "We’re sorry, but your Gmail account is currently experiencing errors," without going into detail as to how widespread the issues are. GMail even goes the extra mile to promise "your account data and messages are safe." A discussion sparked by Shey Smith on FriendFeed shows the outages don't appear to have hit everyone.


The 1-2 punch of the outages has made discussion of the downtime the top conversation starters on Twitter, even higher than the Beijing Olympics or the Russia/Georgia skirmish. People must really hate having their e-mail interrupted!

AppSpot Spy Follows Social Media for Live Keyword Searching

Summize, prior to its acquisition by Twitter, became the unquestioned resource to find out what trends were hot on the service, or to watch for specific keywords. But as good as that product is, it's limited just to the microblogging service. An interesting offering, called "Spy", leveraging Google's App Engine, offers the ability to watch not just Twitter, but also blog posts, Google Reader shares, and FriendFeed.

Spy is a simple visualization of data that flows through Twitter and FriendFeed. You can "spy" on any keyword you choose, looking backwards as little as one hour, or as much as two days. As you would expect, popular topics like "Obama", "McCain" or "iPhone" see updates every minute or so, as do news items, like "Georgia" or "Olympics".


Essentially, Spy becomes a superset, incorporating Twitter Search as well as activity found from the previously mentioned sources, and displays them in near real-time.

The author, Ben Hedrington, explains that he built the service to help as a bridge between the early adopter set and the mainstream when it comes to social media. In his mind, the Spy tool is as simple as sitting back in an armchair and watching TV. Put in a keyword and watch Spy go to work.


Spy In Action Searching for FireFox Across Twitter and FriendFeed
Spy has already been used by some on Twitter to see news come in around blasts in Bangalore, India, and Spy could likely be a good tool in times of fast-flowing news, be it political change, conflict or natural disasters. Twitter and FriendFeed are becoming places for people to react to news in real time, and Spy is now an option to see those reactions, from disparate sources, in one place.

As Hedrington admits, Spy isn't yet the most robust interface in the world. It's more "developer chic" than polished UI, but he says he's working on it. And it's already received the attention of the Google App Engine team (who can be seen using Spy here). As can be expected, Twitter provides a high percentage of the results in Spy, meaning Twitter Search will be "good enough" for most queries, but Spy will also see discussions taking place elsewhere, giving you a bigger picture.

You can find Spy at http://spy.appspot.com/

Fav.or.it Comments On Commenting Statistics

Fav.or.it, which is attempting to bring RSS to the masses, has recently been under fire from people like Duncan Riley of the Inquisitr and Mark Hopkins of Mashable for essentially republishing full feeds of blogs, with integrated comments, alongside advertising.

While I'll leave that fight to them at this point, one interesting byproduct of Fav.or.it's importing of blogs, and their comments, is the ability to spot trends across more than 2,000 feeds, including how often people post comments, what days are most frequent, how often brands are mentioned, and whether the biggest blogs have frequent commentors, or a wide distribution.

An initial post by Nick Halstead, titled "Blogosphere Commenting Statistics", shows an average of 13,000 comments per day coming into the system, and unsurprisingly, that number dives down to just over half on the weekends. And while he only offers three examples: TechCrunch, Mashable and ChrisBrogan.com, it looks like the more intimate feel and participation of Chris leads to a higher level of repeat commenters than do the blog networks.

The discussion around whether RSS readers like Google Reader, Shyftr, and now, Fav.or.it, should include full feeds, include comments, or show ads, has been among the most controversial topics this year in the blogosphere. I believe that at the very least, these systems should make best efforts to push out comments from their system, and that Fav.or.it is actually doing the reverse, pulling in external comments to their system, is at least eyebrow-raising. But while they're doing it, Nick and team have their hands on some very interesting statistics that have got to have Yuvi Panda of The Statbot salivating. Let's see if we end up hearing more from this pool of data.

Feedheads Breaks Out of Facebook to Compete In Shared Items Arena

Before ReadBurner, LinkRiver and RSSmeme arrived, there was only one game in town when it came to calculating the most popular shared items in Google Reader, and it was Feedheads. Feedheads, the popular Facebook application created by Mario Romero, harnessed the power of Google Reader to show the total number of shares each item had, displays which of your friends shared the item, and even what items were popular in a network (like "Silicon Valley", for instance).


But while ReadBurner and RSSmeme were gaining traction outside the walled garden of Facebook, and gathering a good deal of visibility from bloggers who liked their democratized view of finding "hot" stories, Feedheads remained less visible, available only on Facebook. That all changed tonight, as Romero has brought Feedheads to Feedheads.org, featuring the same functionality, but now available on the Internet at large.

As with ReadBurner and RSSmeme, the top shared sources include popular sites like comics from XKCD, Lifehacker, TechCrunch and Gizmodo.

The new Feedheads.org is spartan in terms of its look and feel, but you can view the top shared items over the last 7 days, the last 24 hours, see newly shared items, popular tags, and feeds.

Feedheads also does more than just count the feeds. It can also show who shared the item, by clicking on the number of shares, and it shows shared Google notes, something RSSmeme has held to itself thus far.

You can even log in with your Facebook credentials and see your own sharing history, at http://www.feedheads.org/me, which effectively automatically gives you your own "leaderboard" of shared items, much like I rolled out late last month, only instead of the last 30 days, it shows your cumulative history from the first time you installed Feedheads.

I've often written about the interesting space of tabulating shared items in Google Reader, and the intrigue of Feedheads, having read about it on other blogs, was a big reason I eventually joined Facebook in the first place. After starting out by showing itself in Facebook as simply "Google Reader", the service rebranded as Feedheads in October, and rapidly grew to a user base of more than 10,000 by December of last year. Unfortunately, more recent statistics are unavailable, but breaking out of Facebook is a big step in the right direction for Mario.

The success of both ReadBurner and RSSmeme has shown there's room enough for more than one player in this space, especially as each site has differentiated itself through a series of innovations. Feedheads.org was the original player in this space, and Mario led the way in trying to make order where there was none before. Now, out of the walled garden, it should be interesting to see what innovations he has planned next.

Ten Ways Having Twins Has Changed My Tech and Online Life

The one thing that change always promises to bring is more change. And bringing twins into our household has definitely had an impact - changing how we manage our time, our sleep, our travels, and our activities. Now that Matthew and Sarah are seven weeks old, and with my being back at work for three full weeks, we have something resembling a routine. While I had always kidded that adding to newborns to the family would be "mildly disruptive", there has certainly been an impact to what I've been able to do with tech, both online and offline, since they arrived.

1. Whatever I'm Doing Has to Be Able to Stop At Any Time

So far, I haven't been able to teach Matthew or Sarah how to use an alarm clock, or how to make requests using a pad or paper, let alone e-mail. This means that their best way of requesting attention is crying, and I, or my wife, have to be on alert at all times. This means, for example, that I can't participate in any online gaming, even if it's as simple as hearts or cribbage, because I'd never know when I'd have to bail, and therefore, concede. Whatever I'm doing has to have the ability to be paused, or closed, without impacting somebody else.

2. I'm Not Getting Nearly As Much Online Activity Done In the Morning

Prior to having kids, I could spend a good hour answering e-mail, reading feeds, and getting caught up on the social networks before getting ready to head into the office. Now, that option is clearly gone, as I'm more likely to be awakened by someone who is hungry or needs attention than by my alarm clock. That activity now usually has to take place once they're taken care of and I've driven to the office, leaving my poor wife behind to fend for herself with a pair of ungrateful infants.

3. Scheduling Time for Evening Conference Calls Is A Lot Harder

As I don't typically wait around for press releases to hit my in box to write a story, most of my posts about new technology comes from engaging with developers early, trading e-mail, chatting on Google Talk, or taking a phone call. Now, while my intentions may be to take a call and get updated, it's absolutely likely that call will land in the middle of my feeding somebody, or our phone call could be interrupted by crying. So far, Sarah and Matthew have made their voices heard to Travis Parsons of Browzmi, Eric Marcoullier of Gnip and ReadBurner's Drew Olanoff, to name a few.

4. My iPod Touch Usage Has Gone Way Up

With the addition of the iPod Touch's 2.0 software, the product became much more useful - due to the push e-mail capability, Exchange integration, and of course, all the new applications. But the iPod Touch also has another advantage - stealth use, and one-handed browsing. It's not uncommon these days to be flat on my back with a kid resting on my chest, or sitting up and holding a bottle. This effectively eliminates my use of the laptop, but a WiFi-connected iPod Touch is a great backup plan to read e-mail, browse FriendFeed, access Safari bookmarks, and update Twitter. An added bonus? I can turn off the sound, so using the keyboard is completely silent - again, totally unachievable on the laptop.

5. Backing Up My Data Is Now More Important Than Ever

Despite having much of my life online, I've never been all that great at backing it up. I used to back up my mail and personal docs, or have an archive of company data, on a previous-generation iPod, and also used Apple's Backup program that came with .Mac. But my false sense of security went away a few years ago, when I stupidly left my iPod in the seat pocket on a plane between Chicago and Baltimore, never getting it back. So that wasn't good. Also, as my primary storage space (my laptop) has gone through its share of bumps and bruises, including getting crushed in a rented convertible this last Spring Training, I know that's not 100% reliable. Over time, as I've moved from machine to machine, I've lost very little, but it's been known to happen.

That said, I've moved our family photos to SmugMug, relying on the cloud as a backup to my own local storage, I've posted some early videos to YouTube, and I'm looking seriously at Apple's Time Capsule for home storage backup, because if I lose photos and videos of Matthew and Sarah at this stage, I'll never again get the chance to retake them.

6. My Online Activity Is More Purpose-Based Than Time Wasting

Jeremy Toeman once commented on FriendFeed that my activity on the service after having kids would never again approach the level it was prior to having kids. And while in the first few weeks after Matthew and Sarah came, I kept the same pace, if not increasing it, returning to the office and having that time eat into my schedule has probably made his prophecy true. While I'm still reading the same number of RSS feeds in Google Reader, still keep the blog updated, and still scan FriendFeed, Social Median and Twitter, I'm likely engaging in less idle chit chat and arbitrary "liking", which makes my statistics lower than before.

7. I've Dusted Off the Camera In a Big Way

I don't pepper the blog with photos of myself or my wife all that often, as I've never been much of a photographer, and quite honestly, I want the blog to be more about what I'm observing and thinking than my daily doings. I've also kept my wife's visibility low for her privacy. As a high school teacher, she doesn't exactly want her nosy students knowing her every move. That said, the twins are a lot more photogenic than either of us, and so far, friends online have really eaten up the pictures, so I'm rarely too far from our camera. And after seven weeks, I finally got Matthew and Sarah on video, and posted to YouTube. Videos of them should get more prominent going forward.

8. The Online Social Circle Is Seeing Change

Whereas previously, I would consider single guys or newlyweds my peers, I'm having a lot more opportunity to share stories and jokes with Web-savvy moms and dads who are similarly managing their time. I'm now talking a lot more with parent pals like Cyndy Aleo-Carreira and Carla Thompson or Jesse Stay and Jeremy Neal. Even uber-blogger Robert Scoble and I are probably talking as much about kids' weights and behaviors as we are debating social network behavior.

9. Blog Posts Often Get Interrupted

While I can still, on occasion, sit down and power through a post in 20 minutes or so, it's now just as likely that it will take two or three stops at the laptop to get some of the longer ones done, especially if screenshots or reviews are needed. This means a lot of saving, re-reading what I had started, and posting when I can, not exactly when I wanted to. I've even told people who want stories embargoed, when I do go that route, to get me the data well ahead of time so I can plan better.

10. No More Leaving the Cell Phone In the Other Room

If you have young kids, you know that the last thing you want to do is wake them up after some serious effort to get them to bed. That means better management of potential noise is required. Now, I can no longer casually put my cell phone down, with my keys and wallet, and walk away. Instead, I need to cart it, and the handset for our landline, with me whenever I've got the kids, or if they are sleeping, to avoid prolonged ringing and unnecessary wake-ups.

I knew having kids would be more than "mildly disruptive", and any disruptions so far have been far outweighed by the many benefits of being a father, for sure. But I know that having crossed that chasm means that how I used to operate online is never going to be exactly the same. It should be fun to keep watching as Matthew and Sarah get to 6 months, a year, 2 years and beyond, to find out what activities stay, and which go. Change always begets more change, and I know more change is coming.

Could UDO Be The Next Killer App?

By Mark Dykeman of Broadcasting Brain (FriendFeed/Twitter)

The iPhone and its similarly-gifted sibling, the iPod Touch, combine wireless Internet access and an innovative, flexible user interface to perform a number of functions from a single device. As Apple works to own the mobile phone market - as it has done with trendy personal computers, laptops, and digital music devices - many may be wondering what the next innovation will be.

I think I've found something that could be the next big thing, and a very practical thing at that: UDO, or universal device operation.

Put simply, UDO (pronounced "you do") would be a technology that would allow you to operate any electronic device that used certain control protocols and that were subject to certain security standards. You could use UDO technology, in theory, to:

• Lock and unlock objects (car doors, office buildings, etc.)
• Activate machines (car starter, home appliances, etc.)
• Command or use machines like a standard remote control

We have bits and pieces of this technology strewn about the world today, including:

• Remote controlled car locks and car starters, either by wireless remote or mobile phone
• Building access via RFID chips in security badges
• Dedicated remote controls (e.g. TV, home entertainment center, model airplanes)
• Wireless/RF scanning of barcodes to execute instructions

If we had a single technology or protocol, using wireless Internet or other communication channels, that we could use to program devices to follow certain commands, you'd have something more versatile and powerful than the Space:1999 comlock (a portable video communicator that could also lock or unlock certain kinds of doors using wireless technology).

The iPhone's interface and wireless capability would seem to be ideal for portability, touch sensitivity, and flexible interface.

There are some considerations:

This protocol would have to be built in to virtually every electronic device to be useful. This might include additional hardware and software for these devices.

Security would be key:

You might want to use biometrics to restrict access to your UDO control
It would have to be cost effective
It would have to be dead simple to use.

I think this would be a very practical use of Internet/Web technology which could be adopted by large numbers of users and would be a logical extension of the directions that the iPhone and Touch are heading in.

What are your thoughts on UDO, and where would you like to see this implemented?

FriendFeed Friday Tips #9: How To Keep Your Feed Fresh

Previous entries in this series: The "Hide" function, the bookmarklet, advanced search, how to integrate with Google Talk, how you can incorporate comments, determine an item's original source, how to learn about fellow users, and how to post to the service by e-mail.

At its core, FriendFeed is an aggregator of all your social services from around the Web. Whether you've made a post on your blog, updated your status on Twitter, selected a favorite video on YouTube, or made a bookmark in Del.icio.us, just as a few examples, your personal FriendFeed stream will show that activity, assuming you've added those services to your feed. But even though FriendFeed does a pretty good job at finding your activity quickly, sometimes it can feel like there's a delay, which can get people asking why their entries haven't shown up. In most cases, the solution is just a refresh away.

You can see any of your FriendFeed activity on the "Me" tab.

The Me tab not only shows your previous entries, but also your Services, your Comments and Likes statistics, 12 of your most popular subscriptions, and up to 8 rooms. (See mine here)

To refresh any feed that seems stuck, first click the "Edit/Add" button.

This brings up a window showing your shared sites, and the option to add more.


Click on the stuck service, and FriendFeed will show you your user name for the service, giving you the option to change the user name, remove the account, to refresh the feed, or cancel out. It's the "Refresh Feed" button that does the magic.


If you hit "Refresh Feed", a quick message will say "Refreshing (Service)", e.g. "Refreshing Digg" or "Refreshing Flickr". This forces FriendFeed's spiders to go out and fetch the most recent feed from that service - usually by RSS.

Typically, that's all it takes, assuming the service's RSS feed itself isn't the problem. So if you're super-excited about showing your bookmarks, shares, photos and videos, the "Refresh Feed" button is usually all you need.

As FriendFeed relies on other services to deliver your activity, a delay may instead indicate slowness at the third party site. For instance, if your blog post isn't showing up, it may mean that FeedBurner hasn't yet received your update. If that's the case, you can ping FeedBurner directly, and then go back to refresh your FriendFeed stream to get things back on track.


So if you're the impatient type who wants your FriendFeed stream to be perfect and "caught up", without delay, that's how you do it. As for your issues with attention deficit disorder and obsessive compulsive disorder, that's between you and your doctors.

Hitting Last.fm's 'Love' Button Is Getting Me Back In Tune

I'm an unrepentant music-ophile. Through a combination of CD purchases and burns and iTunes downloads, my music library is a swollen 35 Gigabytes, featuring almost 6,000 songs, which would take more than three weeks to listen to straight through. As a result, it's no surprise there are a ton of great tunes that I haven't gotten to in a while, as I'm not constantly listening, as unfortunate as that is. But recently, I've been using Last.fm a lot more frequently, letting me broadcast my playlist to friends who follow me, and letting them know what I'm listening to, making it a more social, and fun, experience.


A Pet Shop Boys discussion from Thursday on FriendFeed
I have been a longtime Last.fm user, having first sent my data to the service back in 2005. Prior to that, I was also a happy user of MusicMobs, starting in 2004, which merged into Last.fm in November of last year. Both sites collectively offered a great way for me to catalog my listening history, find out which artists and songs I hit up most frequently, and discover new, similar, artists.


Another discussion on FriendFeed re: DJ Tiesto
But as fun as statistics are, it's just a new form of navel gazing, and I never really delved into finding "friends" and seeing who my "neighbors" were on the site. But now that Last.fm is integrated into the various lifestreaming applications out there, like MyBlogLog, and especially FriendFeed, I'm having a good time going through artists I've neglected, and hitting the "Love" button on Last.fm's desktop application, which tells people which songs I'm particularly enjoying.

What I've found is that you never know just who might share the same interests. For some reason, I've had people say they're surprised I listen to such electronic music and techno as DJ Tiesto, Underworld, Depeche Mode, Paul Van Dyk and Armin Van Buuren. I've also taken people back a decade or two by listening to classics from the Pet Shop Boys, and Information Society.


Last.fm tells me my top artists
Through Last.fm, I've found that Jeremiah Owyang is a Tiesto fan, that Steven Hodson has fantastic musical tastes, introducing me to Mind In a Box, which led me to Edge of Dawn, and that Kevin Fox likes Pet Shop Boys. Although I have to admit that in the last few months, I haven't had the laptop pumping out iTunes as much as it used to, largely due to not wanting to unnecessarily wake up the twins, sharing my tastes via Last.fm is getting me back into the music in a big way.

You can find me on Last.fm here:
http://www.last.fm/user/louismg

You can see my "Loved" tracks on FriendFeed here:
http://friendfeed.com/louisgray?service=lastfm

Stupid eTrade, Are You Trying to Bankrupt Me?

I've been a loyal eTrade customer since February of 2000, and during the height of their instabilities last fall, I actually went against the grain, moving my checking account to the service, away from Wells Fargo, and even flipping their stock a few times for short-term sales when many thought they were headed to zero. But that's not to say the relationship is perfect. Over the years, there have been occasional annoyances, and today, errors on their part make it look like I'm about to file for Chapter 11.

This morning, Rackspace went public, the first technology company to IPO in quite some time in what's been a quiet year. And while, so far, their debut hasn't been all that amazing, I did manage to get some shares through gaining early access via my eTrade account, a usual sign that the stock would be headed down and not up, given my spotty track record.

(See also: Top Eight Worst Stock Moves I Ever Made)

But the fact Rackspace hasn't gone through the roof isn't the issue. The bigger issue is that prior to 5 a.m. this morning, I not only received confirmation from eTrade that my bid was accepted, but I received confirmation six times in the space of two minutes. And checking in with my account online, eTrade, despite only allocating to me the shares I had requested, actually looks like it withdrew the total amount of the stock buy for each confirmation. This means that instead of being cash-positive in my brokerage account, I show a deficit of more than $36,000.


eTrade Confirmed I Received Shares. And Again. And Again!
While I tend to believe this will be sorted out without any intervention on my part, I'm sure that this "glitch" will impact my ability to make trades if I wanted to. Not only is the actual cash I believe I should have unavailable, but if I sold other stocks in the account, I wouldn't have that cash available for different trades, as it would undoubtedly look like it was being used to pay down my debt.


eTrade Tells Me I Owe Them Some Serious Dough
eTrade doesn't get to participate in IPOs all that often, and it looks like they haven't quite gotten the process down. I just hope I don't start getting notice after notice that my account is "on margin" or that I get locked out. It's happened before due to stupid clerical errors like this, and I'm not interested in playing that game again. So eTrade, please get your act together and give me my money back. Thanks!

Exposed: Blogging's Secret Next Generation

By Jesse Stay of Stay N' Alive (Identi.ca/FriendFeed)

I'm afraid to admit it, and feel ashamed for the Stay family name, but I can't take all the credit for my last article on Facebook removing features and the confusing nature of the new design. Yes, it's a shame, but I'm going to have to tell you the real story behind us guest bloggers on LouisGray.com. You see, it's not really us blogging most of the time. Louis Gray has an entire army of baby guest bloggers that post for him regularly. Louis recruits us, but in reality he really is looking for the amazing talents of our babies.

I'm going to come clean on this one though. I'm going to have to blame most of my last article about Facebook on my 4 month old son, Jesse III, who has recently been recruited as a new guest blogger for LouisGray.com. It appears we got the II's (from my name) and III's (from his name) mixed up as we were entering our logins that night and he very easily and mistakenly posted as myself that night.

I caught the mistake the next day and was able to quickly correct it, showing that Facebook's new design was definitely not easy enough for a baby to use. I mean, if he couldn't figure out the new Facebook redesign, how could I? I have since docked his allowance and limited him to just one binky per day for the incident, and it will never happen again. Coincidently, it was also him who posted on my blog awhile back, under his own name, saying he was on hiatus from Twitter. He didn't tell me beforehand and I was stuck eating his words as people thought it was actually me leaving Twitter. I mean, why couldn't Twitter allow suffix meta tags so we didn't have to share the same username? I have since found his counsel quite comforting though, as Identi.ca and FriendFeed seem to be working out pretty well for me so far. He certainly knows how to cause a stir though!

Louis Gray, in his open, family-oriented format, is no stranger to baby-blogging. After all, it was his baby Matthew that recently was the center (no pun intended) of the Gray Family/CenterNetworks controversy, and after much heartache and emotions he is now back blogging so I hear for his Dad when his Dad is too busy with work. You often wonder how Louis does it, following everything on FriendFeed, posting sometimes multiple times a day to this blog, and now on SocialMedian. Well, the answer is, so I hear, he doesn't - this is a family establishment here on LouisGray.com and Matthew is as much a part of the family as the rest of our babies are.

Cyndy Aleo-Carreira is also a welcomed guest blogger on LouisGray.com. What you may not know is that her 2-year old daughter, Pete, has been moonlighting on the side of her job with CenterNetworks.com to occasionally help out her mom on LouisGray.com. Yes, while Matthew has been criticized by Allen Stern for slacking on the job, sweet little Pete has also been spending a little time over here helping out in her spare time. We certainly appreciate the help! In fact, Cyndy's first post to LouisGray.com was actually a Seesmic video from her daughter, Pete. Cyndy does such great posts, it's hard to tell which ones her daughter may actually be helping her out on and which ones are actually Cyndy. Thank goodness they don't have the same name!

Next time you read a LouisGray.com guest post, think of the babies behind those posts. We may put our names in front of them, but in reality, our babies are the true reason behind Louis Gray's success. Louis wasn't joking when he said he is an "early adopter".

Jesse III's next post will be on Facebook privacy, for babies.

Relax, Bloggers: Nobody Is Keeping Score, and There's No Quota.

In May of last year, noticing how some bloggers I read often had slowed their publishing, or found alternative routes to express themselves, I asked if they were suffering from what I termed "Blog fatigue." With the dog days of summer upon us (in the Northern hemisphere), I'm seeing the issue crop up again, as peers are talking about taking time off from blogging or social media, explaining holes in their publishing schedule, or openly questioning their enthusiasm. And while I understand the occasional self-assessment, I believe many are feeling pressure to hit a certain number of posts in a given time period, or are feeling challenged to keep pace with much more visible, prolific, people for whom this is much more aligned with their career.

See:

• SheGeeks: The Repetition of The Blogosphere
  
• Colin Walker: Hiatus?
  
• New Comm Biz: Blogger burnout? Give up or dig in.

The truth is that unless you're being paid specifically to blog:

• You don't need to blog every day.
  
• You don't need to post more than once a day.
  
• You shouldn't feel guilty about "gaps".
  
• You don't have to explain yourself to anyone.

Unfortunately for many of us who participate in the tech blogging space, there are many examples of blogs or individuals who can crank out more than one post a day, every single day. There are examples of people who seemingly offer strong content with every article. And there are also the uber-connected, who are seemingly ever-present in a wide variety of social networks, always seem to get to things before you do, and are "ahead" in every statistic, be it number of contacts, comments, or posts. And this doesn't even begin to take into account the professional multi-author blogs, run like an assembly line.

The fact that these individuals are both visible and measurable can bring others to feel inadequate, or challenged to "keep up" when it's actually not necessary. It makes more sense to "be yourself" than to try and match up with somebody else who has different goals and set of circumstances.

I had lunch with a friend this afternoon who said he often won't post to his blog for upwards of a week if nothing strikes his fancy. For him, there's no inner push to meet a quota, to post every day, or provide a take on the last 24 hours' happenings. And I found his counsel wise - to not forget why you started blogging in the first place. For most of us, it wasn't to compete with the professional blogs or to get a scoop to a story, or to have the most followers on the favorite social network of the month. Instead, it was to communicate and share ideas, or just to act as a log of your thoughts and activity.

In the world of business, your revenue starts over at zero every fiscal quarter. If you just had a great quarter, well, good for you and get back to work, because you need to hit quota and make your number in 90 days, or you and the company might be in trouble. But in blogging, assuming you don't have a boss paying you for each entry, there is no quota to fill. If you don't post in three days, you're not going to be fired. Instead of adding stress to your life by setting artificial standards on what you need to do, and posting for the sake of posting, or not giving it your best effort, it makes more sense to let the content drive your effort, and not the other way around.

So don't stress out. The only person keeping score is you.

California's New Sport: Balancing the Cell Phone Below the Dashboard

When it comes to driving, safety and rules, I can be an unfair, biased, elitist.

I feel that with 15 years of ticket-free, accident free, driving, I should be allowed to drive, without worry, 15-20 miles over the speed limit, while others more accident-prone should be branded as such and forced to follow speed limits to the mile. I believe that I should be allowed to drive with my laptop in my lap surfing high-speed wireless Web, while reading a book and eating a burger, while others shouldn't be allowed to remove their hands from the 10 and 2 position, thanks to my so-far spotless record. I don't think I should have to comply with California's latest attempt to pander to worrywarts, and it's clear many aren't.

While I understand it was the popular thing to try and "protect" our roads by forcing people in the state of California to go "hands free" and stop driving with their phones clutched to their ear, I've seen the new law has led to a new breed of evaders, whom I see every day holding their phones below the dashboard, presumably with speakerphone on, glancing about for law enforcement.

See Also: LiveDigitally: New California Headset Requirements Law is Political Baby-Kissing at its Finest

Prior to the law, which went into effect on July 1st, it was fairly common to see people on the phone to and from work, with receivers clutched to their ears, necks stretching to the side before lane changes, or talking idly as we all were stuck in stop and go traffic. And while I knew many people, including me, often, were on their cell phones, I wasn't any more worried about their driving than I was worried if I saw somebody eating, somebody bobbing their head to loud music, or if their car already had a significant share of body damage - a good indication they might get into an accident again.

Now, with a law in effect saying all phone use must be hands-free, it's clear not everybody made the switch to bluetooth, or turned off their phones. But instead of holding them to their ears in defiance of a knee-jerk law, I'm constantly seeing people driving with one hand, holding the phone, face up, just below the dashboard, and in theory out of the view of the cops. Surely, this isn't better than clutching the phone to your neck and looking straight ahead?

There are a million different ways to be distracted while on the road. Some choose to do their makeup, or fix their hair. Others choose to eat fast food. Some constantly surf radio stations to find the right beat, or can be seen putting in a new CD. Others still may smoke, one hand dangling outside the window, eventually discarding the butts in the gutter. And yet, with the exception of that last bit, none of these things are crimes.

Prior to the hands-free law going into effect, I would be checking e-mail at stopped intersections, or reloading sports scores on the Blackberry. I've even hopped on Google Maps, while driving, to find a nearby restaurant or market chain. I looked up e-mail contacts and forwarded messages that had to be out "right then". Now, if I want to pull off such electronic subterfuge, I'll have to be holding the Blackberry below the wheel, glancing upward every once and again to be sure my driving hasn't gone off course.

We were safer before.

Hey Bloggers, We're Discussing Your Posts At Social Median!

Duncan Riley calls the new world of multi-locational blogging and aggregation Blogging 2.0. I call it being flexible and adjusting to how technology advances change how we communicate, collaborate and share, without being set in our ways. And like FriendFeed, Shyftr and other sites before it, Social Median, a new entrant to the social news space, is giving us yet another forum to add comments and discuss blog posts in a smaller social circle, away from the original source. And while Social Median doesn't commit the "cardinal sin" of copying over a full feed and enabling comments that got many in a ruckus over Shyftr last April, the site does provide a headline and an excerpt - good enough for us to get started.

Despite only being available in beta for less than a week, Social Median has been shoehorned into my online news consumption activity, lopped on to my staples of Google Reader and FriendFeed - and each site performs a different critical function.

Google Reader continues to be the lifeblood of my news consumption. It is where I get every single story from hundreds of feeds in rapid fire, and I get to share them to my shared link blog, and to FriendFeed.

FriendFeed is where I'm broadcasting all my online activity from multiple feeds, and engaging with peers about everything from Smugmug to YouTube to Last.fm.

But Social Median is focused. It is all about finding who is creating news, finding new news sources and discussing the topics of the day. Keeping my geek propeller hat on, I am signed up to follow topics like Apple, Blogging, Social Media Watch, Social Networking and Tech News. So far, I've found about 40 different "Newsmakers" in Social Median whom I trust to bring me the news through their submissions and clips.


A Recent Active ReadWriteWeb Story on Social Median
Keeping the topics focused and my peers as the sources makes a combination ready to talk tech. This means rather than passively hitting "share" in Google Reader in isolation, I can browse the 22 comments on ReadWriteWeb's story "Twitter Versus Plurk: The UI Advantage" on SocialMedian (see it here), while only 21 were on the original site. I can add to Social Median's 14 comments on Mashable's Checking Email in the Bathroom? You’re Far From Alone story, which got 18 comments on the original site. (See the Social Median copy) We're also talking about stories from TechCrunch, from ChrisBrogan.com, and even the New Yorker.


A Mashable Story On Social Median With Activity
Blogging 2.0 is about participating everywhere, and understanding that the comments can't be controlled just on your blog. They're moving to micro-communities where people are comfortable discussing your content with peers. In the last few months, we saw talented developers issue applications that let you embed FriendFeed conversations back into your blog (as I am running). Given SocialMedian's early success, it's possible we may see this happen again. I've seen a lot of interesting sites in the lifestreaming and social news space over the last few years, and Social Median is among the few I expect to be using every single day. If you're a blogger who wants to be part of the full conversation, and not just a partial view, make sure you're signed up to Social Median and monitoring or participating. You can find me here: http://www.socialmedian.com/louisgray.

There's No Whale, But Apple Mail is Trying to Fail

Over the last dozen years, I've amassed more than 36,000 stored e-mail messages in my Apple Mail. Through upgrades from Mac OS 8 to 9, OS X and all the ensuing system updates, and from Eudora to Microsoft Outlook Express, Entourage and eventually Apple Mail, I've managed to import all the items, losing almost nothing in the process. And I've been a happy .Mac customer (now MobileMe Mail) since almost the day it debuted. But now, I'm beginning to think I need to start making more frequent backups and deleting old messages, as my index is threatening to die.

Since the update to MobileMe Mail, at any point during the day, whether I am receiving new mail, or moving mail from the Inbox to hierarchical folders, I've sporadically gotten an error saying Apple Mail needs to "repair its information", then forcing me to quit. This has happened practically every day over the last week-plus.




When trying to reopen Mail, I get a note saying I need to reimport all my messages, which takes about 20 minutes, and then, all should be well.





So far, as much as I can tell, no messages have been lost. But some of the metadata is definitely awry, as old folders long left untouched show that messages sent several years ago are now marked as having gone out today, with the timestamp of when my index was rebuilt.

Over the years, I've rolled up a lot of messages, and my e-mail archive is a great resource for me to find old conversations with family members (going back to 1996), or searching keywords to find the first time something came to my attention. My e-mail folder with my father, for example, has more than 3,100 messages in it. My "Blog" top level folder has 3,600 messages, "Commerce" has 3,200, "Comments" another 3,000. There are about 2,500 in the folder for messages to and from Mom, and between 2,000 and 4,000 apiece for Twitter and FriendFeed.

There's no question that alerts from the social services I use have accelerated my e-mail glut, and I'm a pack rat when it comes to saving my mail. But now that I'm starting to see more failures on my Apple Mail, which has been rock solid for more than a decade, I'm starting to "think different" about saving everything. I just might backup again and then go on a deleting run. Hopefully, I can get this solved before it's too late and I lose anything significant.

How One Would-be Web Friend Turned Into a Stalker In Months

In advance, my use of the word "stalker" is not intended to belittle any real-life stalking issues that are much more serious.

I tend to view the Web and the interactions I have with people online optimistically, trusting first and dismissing only after repeat offenses through odd comments or bad behavior. As Cyndy's article from Sunday mentioned, there are bad people out there who have troll-like behavior, whose aim it is to disrupt your life, add frustration and intimidate, but those can usually be tossed out like rubbish. But I've had the most odd experience with one individual this year, who would contact me almost every single day, by e-mail, by social networks and by phone, and couldn't be shooed away by any normal social standards. This individual, despite being told I had no interest in their venture, and that I was uncomfortable with their continued outreach, followed me from Facebook to FriendFeed to Twitter to GMail to my cell phone and back, and has been a bizarre thorn in my side for about four months. I thought I'd show you some of their handiwork without giving away who they are, and so you can see how my attempts to be civil gave the individual the wrong idea.

The individual's art of being a borderline Web stalker in this case was to at first appear friendly, and interested in me as an individual or as a future colleague. What started out as a respectful exchange then saw odd cracks in their mental togetherness as I would get one liners that dismissed me and then came crawling back in days, and each time I'd try to end the conversation, one more would come in its place.

This person first started making comments on my blog back in March, and added me as someone to follow on FriendFeed and Twitter soon after. Their comments, at the time, seemed upbeat and usually thoughtful. By May, they reached out on Facebook, trying to start a more direct relationship:

On May 13, I got a note:

"What is a good time for me to call you (or you call me)?"

No big deal, or so I thought. We talked, and they sent follow-on e-mails by Facebook on May 15, 16, 17 (twice). By the 19th, they were probably 80% of the total messages I got on Facebook, since I rarely use the service. The fact I'd given them any attention made them think I was clearly looking to join their team, leading to the following note:

"When we close the initial round of financing, I am interested in interviewing you, if you wish, for our Director of Websites Experience and Operations/SVP position. It pays well into six figures and includes stock options."

I communicated I was flattered, but not interested. On the 20th, I got four more e-mails via Facebook, and on the 21st, I got the same message again. Then, on May 22nd, as one of four more messages that day, a quick note: "I hope all is well."

This was typical, and while not negative, a ploy to get me engaged again.

As I was now in the habit of ignoring most of their Facebook notes, by May 30, I got a message: "Interview is cancelled due to lack of your response." and the next day, a spiteful barb: "I have high standards. I have tried to be helpful to you as well."

So I thought we were done. Guess not. Because the next day, June 1st, I got a note:

"Together we would be stronger."

Ooh. Just past the creep-o-meter. And the next day, regarding my not joining his team and staying solo:

"Do you feel that your go it alone tendency is holding you back (I do, but what you think is what matters)."

The next day:

"I want to work with you because I believe that you are very talented."

And by June 4:

"I hope that all is well. Sometimes I think that you are wrong, and sometimes I think that I am. I can be impatient and a little demanding."

Stupid me, trying to be nice, I responded and offered to help with a side project. My mistake. When I didn't follow up after another e-mail in 24 hours, as I was busy with my real-world job, I got another note...

"I changed my mind about including you."

At this point, I was elated. So I removed them as a friend in Facebook, hoping the email flow would stop. Wrong.

On June 10, they noticed.

"If you apparently, it seems, took me off as a Facebook friend. I only work with very successful people!"

And on the 17th, a cryptic:

"Louis - I was wrong before."

At this point, realizing they weren't going away, I wrote back:

"On what part? Wrong on reaching out, or wrong on turning away. You keep going back and forth, and this constant stream of Facebook items got to be too much. More than 80% of my Facebook e-mail is from you. :-) I want (and wanted) to be supportive for sure, but I wanted to reduce the every day pinging. I thought pulling your Friend status on Facebook would do that, but it didn't. What's happened is that this stopped being collaborative and started looking more like stalking."

A sampling of the Facebook notes from my Mail from this person.
This, in turn, led to more daily e-mails, almost all one-sided. Some were positive, congratulating us on the arrival of twins, or responding to blog posts. And at that point, at the end of June, things seemed to dry up, as they were kicked off Facebook, for adding too many friends. You'd think that'd be the end, but they they turned to GMail, and calling my cell phone (the one on this blog), again, every day.

On July 3 via GMail:

"Louis - We're close to our financing so I may be able to bring you on full time shortly."

On July 4:

"Louis - What will help you reach the next level of course you're doing well already."

And then later that day:

"Louis - I'm not interested in working together anymore."

I said, simply, "Alright - appreciate the update.", hoping that was the end of it.

But two weeks later:

"It was a lack of communication on your part that made me determine that we could not work together. Sometimes, as individuals, we feel that we do not wish to communicate. And there is a place for that. But we need to overcome that also, if you agree, to form higher and more successful connections."

You'd think the continued notes about being done and not working together would be the end, but I started getting phone calls every day.

My cell phone history shows calls on:

• July 23rd at 12:48 p.m.
  
• July 25th at 11:32 a.m.
  
• July 26th at 10:25 a.m.
  
• July 29th at 10:53 a.m.
  
• July 30th at 9:53 a.m.
  
• July 31st at 9:40 a.m.

In between the daily calls, on the 28th, I got a note on GMail again:

"Louis - I hope all is well. Busy, I am sure!"

And again, I said I was uncomfortable with the pursuit:

"Busy for sure. I get your daily phone calls. Appreciate the attention, but I'm still feeling stalked."

But then, Friday, August 1:

"Do you want to join us?"

Followed by another note later that day, from them, no less:

"Are you stalking me? Please do not contact me anymore."

Outstanding, I guess. In the space of about three months, this person sent at least 49 messages on Facebook, and about 20 more on GMail, and called several dozen times. Yet, somehow, despite all the clues that they were no longer interested in communicating, and the other comments complaining that I hadn't responded or responded quickly enough, that I somehow was the stalker and I was the one being asked not contact them any more. And while I could be optimistic and say that this last note means I'll never hear from them again, I have no confidence in that, as every other note saying they were done was followed by more nonsense. And if it hadn't already, I'm sure this post will fire them up again, lucky me.

I made a few mistakes in this process. First, I was open to talking, being friendly with a person who I barely knew. The world of online social networks makes this commonplace. Later, feeling bad for ignoring all their messages, and wanting to not sound like a jerk, I had offered to help on a side-project, when I should have just blocked them outright on Facebook. I should have tried to be less nice from the very beginning and made it clear that under no circumstances was I interested in their project, or joining them. But at this point, I tend to believe any rational decision I would have made would be overrun by their instability, which was made clear by the complete 180s you can see above from message to message. This wasn't an aggressive entrepreneur looking to get a strong staff. It was a individual with borderline obsessive behavior who for whatever reason thought I was a must-recruit.

I've been lucky enough that the overwhelming majority of communications and relationships I've built online have been positive, and I've met some great people. But this months-long incident and the potential for more like it have me hesitant about being too friendly too fast. I'm lucky that I haven't seen the hatred and negativity that some have encountered, and I've not been in fear of any physical harm, but this has gone on too long. Have you ever run into something like this, and how do you get out of it?

Everybody Wants to be Internet Famous

By Cyndy Aleo-Carreira of Shakespeare I Ain't (E-mail / Twitter)

The New York Times Magazine piece called The Trolls Among Us has been the talk of the tech blogosphere since its online release on Friday. There are those who feel it's an amazing piece of investigative journalism. Others are shocked that trolls who've been well-known by deed if not by name, have finally been revealed, including those who harrassed Kathy Sierra. I happen to be in a third camp. I'm disappointed in the Gray Lady for giving trolls a voice.

When Andy Warhol famously declared that in the future, everyone would be famous for 15 minutes, he had no idea that the Internet would be the platform that would make his quote a reality. While few people will ever achieve the fame that comes along with being a film star or world leader, the Web had provided a world stage where anyone who figures out how to be completely over the top at something can have those 15 minutes.

The Times piece has proven exactly that point. These trolls, who purport to carry on their activities for whatever random purpose suits them at the time, are just as desperate for attention as anyone else seeking Internet fame. The allure of being interviewed by such a well-known paper was obviously too attractive to turn down. If the purpose of trolling was really a psychological experiment or however those interviewed chose to spin it, then why agree to expose themselves if not for the egoboo of fame?

Somewhere, deep inside most of us, exists the need to be recognized for something, anything. But in this Web culture where anything goes much of the time, we seem to forget that most people become famous for doing something productive. The old-school Hollywood royalty was famous for making entertaining films, not flashing their uncovered crotches getting out of cars. As bloggers, we are slowly heading into more of the tabloid-esque coverage that has resulted in the craze for celebrity car crash videos and drunken fall photos. As users, we seem inexorably drawn toward gaining as much attention for ourselves as we can. The Times may have done it in a more traditional medium, but until we go back to covering successes and those doing good in the tech space, we may as well be the next Enquirer.

I Got a Mac OS X Trojan and Infected CenterNetworks. Oops.

As a sometimes smug Mac user for the overwhelming majority of my computer-using life, virus warnings, anti-virus software and security updates were always something "those other guys" had to deal with. Using my Mac, I would even have colleagues send me attachments from their Windows machines which they thought were viruses, so I could open them up in a text editor and see what mischief they had intended to cause. But today, I realized my laptop had somehow acquired a rare trojan that does hit Mac OS X, and the results of the bugger were actually more harmful for Allen Stern of CenterNetworks than they were for me. Oops.

This morning, Allen Stern presented a new video following a press conference he held that discussed his take on the "firing" of my son Matthew, who had secured a short-lived position in CenterNetworks' San Francisco bureau. As usual, Stern's tongue-in-cheek humor and deadpan delivery were very good. The conclusion reached by his video was that Matthew would be compensated out of court with the delivery of an "I love New York" t-shirt, and I quickly commented on his site that we agreed to the settlement.

But amusingly, having posted my comment, I noticed that virtually all of the ads on Allen's site were for pills that solved erectile dysfunction, and all the banners were rotating images of Viagra, Cialis and Levitra, which made no sense on Allen's tech blog, and had absolutely zero to do with his story on my kid. So, I made screenshots, and jokingly sent a note to FriendFeed, saying, “I Just Hope the Money from these Ads Keeps CN "Up".


CenterNetworks' Ads Were All In Pill Form for Me
Allen, looking at the pictures and then back at his site, thought I was joking. But I wasn't. When he realized I was serious, this set off a flurry of calls by him to his advertising partners, swapping out of ads, and testing both on his side and mine, as we tried to figure out... was it him, or was it me?

Turns out it was all me, and separated by 3,000 miles, I was causing Allen's blood pressure to rise for no good reason. It turned out that at some point, recently, some file I downloaded hijacked my DNS settings on my MacBook Pro, and selectively overlaid his banner ads from Tribal Fusion, on both CenterNetworks and HTMLCenter, with these stupid Viagra ads. Meanwhile, my wife's laptop was fine, showing normal ads, while I was viewing the world through an odd filter.

So, I did some searching on the Web and found I had likely run into one of the few pieces of known Mac OS X malware out there, a Trojan, which disguised itself as a clean file. So, I decided to finally get some real anti-virus software to take a look at it, and found a solution from Intego called Virus Barrier, which looked a lot more Mac-friendly than dreck the Symantec guys offer. Sure enough, after paying to buy their software, installing, and rebooting, the offending file was found, masquerading as a QuickTime extension. The Intego software let me delete it, and all of a sudden, all was well. Allen's site now shows normal ads, and he doesn't carry the mark of a dope dealer.


Intego Virus Barrier Going Through My Files


Aha! A trojan has been located and destroyed!
Of course, this now raises the question... how did I get this on my machine? Some of the stories I read said the trojan could have been hiding in the form of a fake card game application, and others, as a tool that lets you watch adult videos. So... neither one of those makes sense. But despite that mystery, the good news is that I think it's all resolved. I have a product that will protect my Mac in the future if anything like this happens again, and I still know Allen Stern is on the up and up - a great blogger with a good sense of humor and values as well. It's just disappointing my stupid error somewhere dragged him through the mud through my "learning process".

Take a Google Reader Shared Item Viral Using Notes

If you use Google Reader as your online RSS reader, you're no doubt familiar with the ability to share an item to your shared link blog. For example, mine can be found here.

Earlier this year, the Reader team added the ability to post a "Note" to your share items. The idea of Google Reader Notes is that you introduce friends who subscribe to your link blog to the story you've shared, explaining why you found it interesting.

As a subscriber to some shared link blogs, it's growing increasingly common that I am seeing Notes posted, and sometimes, these Notes are authored by "friends of a friend", whom I am not subscribed to myself. For example, I recently saw a note that Jesse Stay posted on a WebWare.com article, shared in Robert Scoble's link blog. This means the WebWare.com story was originally shared by Jesse Stay, then shared by Robert Scoble, and then read by me.

Item's Source: Jesse Stay → Robert Scoble → Louis Gray
As more people are subscribing to Google Reader link blogs, I bet this is happening everywhere. So here's an experiment I would like to try:

1. I will share this article with a note.
   
2. The note will request you also share the item and say where you got it.
   
3. In your note, request those subscribed to you also share it add their name and keep your original text.

In theory, a Google Reader shared item, as it gets reshared from person to person, could be as viral as the old-school offline chain letter, with the most-recent recipient having absolutely no connection to the original sharer, except for the connection path.

So why don't we give this a try? As RSSmeme tracks shared items with notes, we could see a variety of paths the shared link took to get to you, and we could see a number of interesting "comments" on FriendFeed that show the route of the item.

I'll go first. This could of course fail due to a small number of Google Reader users who use notes, my continued obscurity, and disinterest, but I'm willing to give it a shot.

Five Cool Bloggers for The Hot Month of August

August marks the sixth month where I've tried to highlight five lesser-known bloggers who are quietly toiling in relative obscurity. Each of the bloggers highlighted each month has been added to my Google Reader list, via Toluu, and has, to date, been consistently informative, interesting or entertaining. Most are focused on Web applications and social media.

There's no simple rule for determining obscurity, aside from the fact their content consistently outproduces the number of comments they receive, or likely, traffic. They don't rank highly on common measures, such as Technorati, and have, to date, avoided controversy. As this is the sixth month producing this list, don't forget to check out the archives and find 25 other sites who have been featured. Prior editions can also be found for March, April, May, June and July.

1) Chris Baskind / ChrisBaskind.com (www.chrisbaskind.com)

Focus: Environment, Technology, Social Networking
Recent Highlight: Dear Twitter: It’s Over. And It’s for The Best
RSS Feed: Subscribe Now

2) Mona N / Pixel Bits (pixelbits.wordpress.com)

Focus: Wikipedia, Social Networking, Humor
Recent Highlight: Screw Facebook, I’m Learning How to Unclog Toilets from Knol (Google’s “Wikipedia”)
RSS Feed: Subscribe Now

3) Kyle Lacy / KyleLacy.com (www.kylelacy.com)

Focus: Social Media, Web Applications, Marketing
Recent Highlight: How to be Productive with Social Media!
RSS Feed: Subscribe Now

4) David Griner / The Social Path (www. thesocialpath.com)

Focus: Social Media, Marketing
Recent Highlight: In a Free Online World, What Are You Willing to Pay For?
RSS Feed: Subscribe Now

5) Justin Korn / Justin Korn’s Blog (blog.justinkorn.com)

Focus: Photography, Social Networking, Technology
Recent Highlight: The Online Participation Factor
RSS Feed: Subscribe Now

To see even more new blogs I'm adding to my reader, or get a sneak peek for September's highlighted blogs, follow my activity on Toluu. If you don't have a login to Toluu, send me an e-mail to louisgray@mac.com and I'll get that set up right away.

State of the Blog: July 2008 Recap

July 2008 In Summary (Archive Page)

Total stories published to date: 1,443

Total stories published in July: 54
(About 1.7 per day, up from 1.3 in June)

Total stories in July with comments: 53
(98% of all stories, from 37 and 97% in June)

Total comments on July posts: 783, approx. 14 per post.
(From 493 or 15 per post in June)


July statistics from SiteMeter, with that service's numbers.
(Why show real data? See blog post)
Technorati Authority Ranking: 978 (up 190)
Feedburner Peak in Month: 2,989 subscribers (up 777)
Feedblitz E-mail Subscribers: 64 subscribers (up 8)
MyBlogLog Members: 311 (up 31)

Twitter Followers: 1,569 (Up 312)
FriendFeed Followers: 3,268 (Up 726)

Monthly Traffic Rank in Last 12 (via SiteMeter): 1st overall.

Month over month growth: 42.6%
Year over year growth: 1,197.9%

Top Five Most Visited July Stories (According to Analog)

1. Seeing the Web's Racist Underbelly Is Saddening and Shocking
2. How Silicon Valley Heavy Are Web 2.0 Consumers?
3. TinyURL Adds Custom Alias Feature To Shortened URL Service
4. The Importance Of Blog Linking Seems to Be Declining
5. Twitter Chokes Unauthenticated API Requests By IP, Sites Gasp for Air

Others receiving votes: TweetDeck: New Twitter AIR App With Summize Integration, Groups, Nine Ways to Enlarge the Social Media Audience, July's Jewels: Five Obscure Blogs that Sparkle, As I Get Older, Some Online "Friending" Gets Creepier, Bloggers' Interactions With Readers Decrease With Prominence, and To Blog, or Not to Blog - That is the Question...

Most Commented-On Articles, According to Disqus:

1. As I Get Older, Some Online "Friending" Gets Creepier (61 comments)
2. Seeing The Web's Racist Underbelly Is Saddening and Shocking (59 comments)
3. Bloggers' Interactions With Readers Decrease With Prominence (53 comments)
4. The Importance Of Blog Linking Seems to Be Declining (52 comments)
5. Twitter Finding New and More Creative Ways to Fail (32 comments)

July of 2008 could have been a challenging one. The first month after having twins, some thought, as did I at times, that the new family obligations could make efforts here come to a screeching halt. Needless to say, that didn't happen. Being on paternity leave for most of the month helped, as did the addition of some great voices as guest bloggers, who I've enjoyed having profiled here. In June, there were guest posts from Cyndy Aleo-Carreira, Jesse Stay, Hutch Carpenter, Colin Walker, Mark Dykeman, Rob Diana, and (jeff)isageek. I hope to see their names here quite a bit going forward, and maybe some new names as well? Stay tuned.

Product news in the month saw new Twitter clients TweetDeck and Posty get some solid traction, the opening up of SocialMedian in beta, AssetBar's launch of FanFlow, the acquisition of Ballhype and launch of Beltway Blips, not to overlook the controversial launch of Cuil, and rollout of the new 2.0 software for iPhone and iPod Touch.

To keep on top of things, subscribe via RSS, via e-mail, follow me on Friendfeed or Twitter, or keep watch on the shared link blog!