Stories

A Chance at a Personal Introduction Using Question and Answer Sites

Feb 4, 2008

I have been really getting into answering questions on LinkedIn's answers section. I have the technology areas on my RSS feed so when they come in. I find I learn a lot from some of the questions posed. Not just answering questions for people.I have also have really made a lot of connections doing this. I was just thinking about what a wonderful opportunity it is to make one on one connections with people and make a good first impression by helping them solve a problem.

Case Western Reserve University to Debut Usage of 2D codes on campus

Feb 3, 2008

I was turned to an article about usage of QR Codes on Campus over at 2d-code.co.uk. Beginning February 1st 2008, students, faculty and staff at Case Western Reserve's Cleveland, Ohio, campus will be participating in the nation's first trial of "2D codes"�commonly referred to as "QR Codes"�by bringing the cell phone technology to campus. The 2D codes, first introduced on campus...

Google's New Social Graph API

Feb 2, 2008

Google just release a social graph API out into the wild. Google crawls the Web to find publicly declared relationships between people's accounts, just like Google crawls the Web for links between pages. But instead of returning links to HTML documents, the API returns JSON data structures representing the social relationships that were discovered from all the XFN and FOAF.

From Ignite - How Will a Social Media Agency Work With My Current Agency?

Feb 2, 2008

Just read a great post over at Ignite Social Media about How Will a Social Media Agency Work With My Current Agency?It has some great suggestions on ways a social media consultant can provide services for your social media marketing campaign:ConsultantTrainerExecutorGive it a read, it can help you f...

Moving to the Next Challenge and Shifting From Web Programming

Feb 1, 2008

I waiting a while before I started blogging about this topic until everything was in place. It seems all the pieces have fallen in place so I am going to start on this new path.Tomorrow 2/1/2008 is my last day a lead web application developer at Palo Alto Software. I gave notice 2 weeks ago and on 2/6/2008 I will be started a new job with Altrec in Redmond, Oregon.I am shifting my career a lit...

Defining My Social Media Index and Settings Some Benchmarks

Feb 1, 2008

I was reading, Quantifying the Impact of Social Media: Where the Edelman White Paper Got it Right, Got it Wrong and What We Should Do Next, by Jim Tobin today.I have been reading all the same white papers and following all the same discussion of Quantifying the Impact of a Social Media Campaign as well as experiencing it real time with social media campaigns I am part of.As a social media consultant you need to be...

A Wearable Camcorder and Community Site for Publishing

Feb 1, 2008

Check this cool camera out. Itis a company of action sports enthusiasts and media professionalsIt is perfect for the person who wants to document their active life.Supposively the quality is pretty good. The camera can record 2 ...

Marketing through Reputation Management

Jan 30, 2008

I monitor my reputation basically on a daily basis as part of my routine. I Google myself and see how things are stacked and if there is anything new. I have a pretty unique name so I pretty much dominate all the listings.Today a new profile site showed up on my first page called Disqus. Just pretty much a social network profile and it aggregates comments from me around the Internet.Will evaluate the tool more later. ...

Video Interview with Author of Now is Gone

Jan 29, 2008

I just finished reading Now is Gone last night by Geoff Livingston. If you are thinking about getting involved in Social Media Marketing from a professional standpoint this is the book to read.It is tailored as a primer for the executive or marketing professional that is looking get more aware of social media and the conversation that is occurring out there.Here is a Read more →

Should a Social Media Consultant Train or Stay on with a Company.

Jan 29, 2008

I was reading a blog entry by Lisa McNeil called The Marketer's Foray Into Social Media, where she talks about her experiences with clients and the top questions they ask. Anyways, the post was great. I noticed a comment at the bottom by Geoff Livngston the author of Now is Gone. His comment asked the question: Shouldn't a social...

New Flash Widget Builder from Sprout Builder

Jan 29, 2008

I was just playing around with the new widget builder from

Google Checkout has a New Order Report API

Jan 29, 2008

A while back Google released a new reporting feature in their Google Checkout payment system, and now they have added an Order Report API for getting access to your Google Checkout orders.They seem to be have found a nice flow to their feature rollout and extending it through the API shortly thereafter.Nice example of how Read more →

Gmail Greasemonkey API issue and Social Programming

Jan 29, 2008

I really like Google approach to extending their applications beyond their core features and encouraging research and development by the masses. I was just reading a post on the Official Gmail Blog: Gmail Greasemonkey API issue. They outline how they have updated Gmail Javascript to load in an iframe. They talk about how this change may create some side effects in how some scripts w...

Facebook Platform Application Development Fatigue

Jan 29, 2008

ReadWriteWeb is posing the question Have Facebook Apps Peaked? The hype is gone and what is left? Not to many useful tools that we can use.Next we should see a bunch of truly usable business applications that we can use in our everday life. I would like to to see some truly Web 2.0 IT applications that I can utilize for projects and conducting business on a daily basis.

Using Facebook as a launching point for your new application, and injecting work into your employees social networking habit.

Jan 28, 2008

Was reading the post on Techcrunch this morning called Huddle uses new apps and Facebook to take on Basecamp. Its interesting on several levels to see another Basecamp competitor as well as someone leverage facebook as a marketing tool for their new web applications. How launching a Facebook can be a tool to drive new users to your app...

Perfect Example of Application Built on Top of Amazon Web Services

Jan 28, 2008

Sonian is about to launch their new data archive services dubbed the Sonian Archive SA2.The server runs almost completely in the Amazon Cloud. It was designd to be a highly-scalable cloud application that specifically used four fo the Amazon Web Services:Amazon S3

Many firms fear social websites will waste staff time. But they can bring benefits by helping collaboration and the spread of ideas

Jan 28, 2008

Great article in the Sunday Times Online called Learn to love social network sites, it is about the widespread perspective of social networks and how allowing them to be used at work will contribute to employees wasting time and losing money for companies.It talks about how many companies have banned social networks all ...

Interesting Tools for Evolving Your Social Graph

Jan 28, 2008

I was reading, Delver Comes Out Of Stealth With a New Twist on Social Search on Techcrunch tonight. Delver is a social graph search engine that allows you to easyily connect with people. Delver is attempting to solve two key search-related problems: The first is that current search engines do not take into account the identity of the searche...

Google Playing Around with Offline Usage of Google Docs

Jan 28, 2008

Came across a post of Google Blogoscoped today on Google testing using Google Gears for offline Google Docs access.This would be huge in taking more market share from Microsoft Office. It would allow users to work with documents much in the same way they do with the desktop Microsoft version.They seem to be only testing it out right now and will be initially making it only available for Google Docs and n...

Companies and organizations and their approach to social media

Jan 28, 2008

Was just reading some of Now is Gone by Geoff Livingston. There is a great paragraph I just came across that really sums up a lot for me:Companies and organizations should look at social networks as a way to engage potential community members outside of the confines of a corporate URL. By participating intelligently and building value, a company can create a great conversation with its constituents as well as future customers. Further, they can encourage them to take actions an...

50 Social Sites That Every Business Needs a Presence on

Jan 28, 2008

Everyone is a little intimidated and overwhelmed about where to start with your social media marketing campaign. There are so many sites and so few metrics for evaluating your success.You really can't ignore social media for your company anymore, if you do your competitors are going to eat your lunch. So where do you start?InsideCRM just released a great list of Read more →

Facebook opens up Javascript Library for their API

Jan 27, 2008

It isn't quite embracing OpenSocial, but with their latest joining of the data portability as well as now opening up the JavaScript client library which allows you to make Facebook API calls from any web site, Facebook is getting closer to being fully open.Since the library does not require any server-side code on your server, you can now create a Facebook application that can be hosted and ran on any web site.Almost all Facebook APIs are supported except for Photo Upl...

New Youtube Features from Google

Jan 26, 2008

The Youtube team recently release a couple of new features for the Youtube video platform. They added: New View for Videos tab which improves the video browsing experience by fully exposing the search options on the videos page. This makes it easier to find what you're looking for quickly Also Added a display of the most recent comments you have made on YouTube videos, choose the new 'My Recent Comments' setting on your profile page. On your channel page, users can ...

Demographic bidding using Google Adwords

Jan 26, 2008

Ever wish you could show your ads to a specific group like women aged 25-34? Want to see how your ads perform with certain demographic groups and then adjust your bids accordingly?Google is introducing a new demographic bidding feature from AdWords. Demographic bidding helps you display your ads to specific gender and age group audiences on some sites in the Google content network, giving you more control o...

2008 is off to a good start for blogging

Jan 26, 2008

In 2008 I have started really using Blogger as an extension of my idea and content platform.With this post I now have 42 posts for January of 2008 which beats the 41 entries I posted in the entire year of 2007.Really feeling my voice this year.