Stories

Yet Another Google API, this Time for Visualizations

Mar 26, 2008

The Google Visualization API lets you access multiple sources of structured data that you can display, choosing from a large selection of visualizations.The Google Visualization API also provides a platform that can be used to create, share and reuse visualizations written by the developer community.You can embed visualizations directly into your website a...

Google Releases and AJAX Language API

Mar 26, 2008

Google added another interesting piece to its API stack. Now with the Google AJAX Language API, you can translate and detect the language of blocks of text within a webpage using only Javascript. The language API is designed to be used to translate and detect languages on the fly when off line translations are not available.It is a nice addition to the Google Family of API's and great for internationalization of web applicat...

New Workstation Setup

Mar 25, 2008

I just got a new levovo Laptop. It was presetup with Windows XP.It took me 30 minutes flat to setup completely for my needs.Installed my web development environment.Installed my database development environment.Installed Windows Live Messenger, and Yahoo Messenger.Installed Firefox.Done, everything else I do is web-based. All my email, docs, files, everything is either on Google, Amazon Web Services or som...

Widgets and Social Network Applications are Temporary

Mar 21, 2008

I was just driving home tonight and thinking about all the widgets and OpenSocial applications I have been developing lately.Starting thinking about the limited distribution OpenSocial Applications and the wide distribution of widgets.I was playing with a real sweet Flash Distribution that was driven from XML. I was thinking about the different ways I could distribute it on web sites and social networks.Of course I think about how to make some use it and a...

LinkedIn Offers Company Profiles

Mar 21, 2008

LinkedIn just announced they are offering that, "Now Companies too have profiles on LinkedIn".I have always used LinkedIn as a business facing presence for myself. It has linkages for all my employees?Now, you'll be able to see over 160,000 profiles of companies on LinkedIn, ranging from Fortune 500 companies to non-profit organizations as well as LinkedIn's own Company Profile page.C...

Amazon Launches New Web Service for Fulfillment

Mar 20, 2008

Amazon added another layer to their stack of web services to. They added the Amazon Fulfillment Web Service (Amazon FWS) which allows merchants to tap in to Amazon's network of fulfillment centers and logistics. Merchants can store their own products to our fulfillment centers and then, using a web service interface, fulfill orders for the products and ship a product to a customer.There are two sets of APIS - Inbound and Outbound.

Liveblogging, Reminders, Tasking and Calling Myself

Mar 19, 2008

I have been using Jott for that last few months to record tasks, record events, publish blogs, and other general communications by calling Jott and leaving a voice mail or "jott" and it translates and sends to the link that I dictate.I am pioneering using this for live blogging of events and sending out user generate reporters.Today I came across Utterz which is a simlar to Jott, but adds in the pictures and videos but utilizes a larger list of links you can post to.

Google Reader and Google Notebook as My Knowledgebase

Mar 19, 2008

I use Google Reader and Google Notebook on a daily basis. I read and consume feeds from 300+ blogs daily. I scan, read, visit and participate in many of the posts. I then either tag the blog entries in my Google Reader.Or I visit the blog and highlight some or all of the text and add to my Google Notebook.I keep huge amounts of information in both of these. With the combination of tagging in Google Reader and organizing in notebooks in Google ...

My Social Graph and Social Index

Mar 18, 2008

So I have several spurts in trying to understand, track, and ultimately evolve my social graph and my social index.For anyone not following these areas of study, here are some definitions:Social Graph Definition: Social Graph is the network of connections that exist through which people communicate and share information.Social Index Definition - Social Index is a measurement of the value, size and velocity of a social grap...

Legal Rights Involved with Photography

Mar 18, 2008

I enjoy taking pictures of anything and everything. I am always curious about the legal rights of taking pictures of people and places.I just read a great post called Photography and The Law: Know Your Rights which contained the The Ten Legal Commandments of Photography.It has great information about some common ...

Google Adds Maps to Google Chart API

Mar 18, 2008

Google released a new update for the Google Chart API. It allows you to create maps with specific data areas based upon what you pass.You can highlight states, countries and other elements and display summary or other data regarding those elements.A nice feature added to the API. The have a lot of features hitting the pavement lately across their web applications / API.

Adobe AIR Applications

Mar 17, 2008

So recently I have installed 2 Adobe Air applications. I installed twhirl a twitter client built on the Air platform, and now I just did Snippely a snippet code tool from MooTools.I really like the install process which is very smooth and makes installing new apps so easy.I really like the application itself too. They are very sexy, clean ...

Flash Mobs

Mar 13, 2008

Was just reading a cool post about Flash Mobs on Ignite Media. Very cool concept.Is it social media?Is it art?Is it protest?Ignite Media defines a flash mob as:You gather a group of people (through text messages, Facebook groups, emails, whatever) and ask them to come to a particular place at a particu...

Youtube Releases New API

Mar 12, 2008

Youtube finally has reworked their API to allow for uploading of videos. This was a huge problem in integrating YouTube in Social Media Campaigns.Here are some of the things you can do with the YouTube Data API now:Create a web front end to let people view videos about specific topics. Create a desktop application or plugin that pla...

Youtube Approach to their New API

Mar 12, 2008

I wrote earlier about Youtube's new API. I am really happy they updated it. It has several features that I feel are key to using their platform.However in thinking more about it and reading other posts about it I realize their approach and openness is the real gem. Youtube understands the basic 2.0 concept that user activity should not have to occur on your site. This is a very tough concept for some players to understand.Key player still think that the...

Wordpress Installation and Hosting on the Cloud

Mar 11, 2008

Just got a request to install Wordpress blog for a client that will potentially receive a large amount of traffic.So I opted to use the Mosso.com Cloud Hosting Platform by Rackspace. Took me less than 10 minutes to setup the site, install, and configure the Wordpress blog.In my Mosso.com admin interface and added a new web site, chose to use PHP 5 as core technology and chose mysql as the database.Once setup and created a MySQL database....

RSS Tracking and Analytics Using Feedburner

Mar 11, 2008

I have bee spending the week finding many types of RSS feeds for different purposes. I am building large lists of them under different topics and tracking the source of these feeds. I am noticing about 1 in 10 feeds are using Feedburner or any type of tracking for it. Though I am happier at the amount of quality data available via RSS it concerns me that people who have employed RSS do not understand the the value of tracking their RSS consumption and usage. <...

Chris Anderson of Wired and Michael Arrington of TechCrunch

Mar 7, 2008

Was just watching and enjoying a show of Charlie Rose that had Chris Anderson of Wired and Michael Arrington of TechCrunch.Chris was very informative and I'll have to watch again.Michael Arrington was impressive. He covered tech as social issues in a way that kept me listening.<...

Alltop...Guys Latest...

Mar 6, 2008

Was just checking out Guy Kawasaki's latest project Alltop.The site layout instantly sucked me in.Couldn't get past the grey bar layer at first. Actually after i got over it....it forced me to really focus on the content.....interesting approach.The sites that are already in my sights within the categories I care about were nothing new. However the introduction to a few new catego...

Location Tracking Using Yahoo's New Fire Eagle

Mar 5, 2008

I was checking out Yahoo's new release, Fire Eagle. It is a secure and stylish way to share your location with sites and services online while giving you control over your data and privacy. Applications and users can respond to your location and help you to discover more about the world around you in real time.It has an API allowing applications to be developed that will allow you to interact online based upon your location. This could b...

Google Launches a Contacts Data API

Mar 5, 2008

I have been getting happier with the contact management tools available in Gmail...and some of the integration with other Google Applications.I would like to see more social networking and social graph management tools, like their recent social graph api release.Now Google has added another simple, yet powerful tool to their API arsenal. A common contact list has helped power applications like Gmail, Google Reader, and Google Calendar, and with the launch of the

Why We Give More Weight to Facebook Application Development Over MySpace

Mar 4, 2008

I was just reading MySpace Developer Platform: Jim Benedetto, MySpace on Jeremiah Owyang's blog. He is at the Social Graph Conference in San Diego. I wish I was there. Anyways he was posting a bunch of information about the MySpace development platform and it really shows an impressive approach on their part in reaching out to the developers community.

Marketing Using Facebook

Mar 4, 2008

Was just reading Facebook Marketing Opportunities over at Digital Podcast. I am currently playing around with several strategies for marketing our companies products on Facebook. His statement about 8 ways to market on Facebook really stood out, and I have seen reciprocated on several other core marketing blogs: ...

Browser Add Ons

Mar 1, 2008

I am pretty addicted to to Firefox Browser Add-Ons. I have many of them to the point of add-on overload.I use them for adding items to my Google Notebook, Amazon S3, CoComment, and much more.I syndicate and share to many social networks, social bookmarking, and other sharing sites.I do all this through Firefox. So recently I have been using Firefox for a primary business function which requires a cookie. So I need to use Internet Explorer for my personal...

White Label Social Networking for a Mobile Platform

Feb 28, 2008

I have been playing with Ning a lot lately and really pushing it to see its potential for a rapid social network deployment.It is very powerful and gives you a huge amount control over setting up a social network.Now I heard about a new white label social networking platform for mobile and handhelds. It is called iamota impact. It allows you to:Quickly and easily create and launch...