Stories

Kin Lane

Use Flickr for Online and Social Media Marketing

I have historically played around with many online marketing and social media marketing techniques. I play around from time to time to see what works and what doesn't. Last year I was walking around with my daughter and taking pictures for our Eugene Local Search web site. I am trying to have pictures of local attractions and business around Eugene, Oregon. I took this picture of the Read more →
Kin Lane

Ping Service for your Blog

Part of your syndication strategy for your blog should be alerting blog search engines that you have made an update.I found a service today called Ping-O-Matic that you can put in your blog name, home page, and rss URL and choose which services to ping that your blog has been updated.This is a great tool to get the word out there regarding your blog.
Kin Lane

Duplicate Content Problem with Search Engines

Every time I discuss syndicated content to other sites and platforms I get the question, well what about getting in trouble for duplicate content? This is a topic that has been over-hyped and discussed way to much. It is true if you just programatically build out multiple sites all with the same or similar content you will get dinged for this. The problem people have is they are too focused on what search engines are thinking and forgot about their #2 users..."HUMAN...
Kin Lane

Whiteboard 2.0

I like using whiteboards to sketch out ideas. I love drawing elaborate graphs and visuals to try and convey my point. I usually take pictures of my drawings so I have a digital copy, and I have even played with a few smartboards that record my drawings.I came across a web 2.0 whiteboard created by GE today called Imagination Cubed. It is pretty cool. Just a well done simple application. You can draw your thoughts an...
Kin Lane

Flickr Getting More Social

I haven't spent much time on Flickr until recently. I have had an account for years, but only upload every once in a while.Tonight when I logged on to check out the mobile features I notice they are getting more social. It asked me to complete my profile and upload a profile picture and tell a little more about myself.Didn't fill out much about myself, really get tired of putting information about myself. Need a tool to do it automatically.
Kin Lane

Amazon Web Services Experienced an Outage

Amazon Web Services experienced an outage this morning across all their systems. There is a flurry of posts on this forum about the Amazon Web Services Outage.This is the first actual outage I have seen or heard of on the Amazon Web Services Platform. Definitely a black eye for Amazon Web Services and building credibility with the community to use them as the core of their networ...
Kin Lane

A Little Closer to a Single Social Interface

A new startup called PageOnce makes an attempt to create a single social interface. This doesn't appear to be too much different than Netvibes or Pageflakes. However since it is in private BETA I can't really take it for a test drive.Definitely a common problem for social networking and other web application fatigue when y...
Kin Lane

Web 2.0 Apps Done Right

I have blogged several times about web 2.0 applications and what I look for in them. I have been evaluating a lot of applications lately and a good application really stands out.I have been looking through Image and Photo sharing applications all day and comparing them against each other. Man there is a lot of crap.One appliceation that I think truly reflects a quality Web 2.0 applications is the image sharing site 23. The have the...
Kin Lane

Applications Today Without an API

I am doing a lot of research right now on quality web 2.0 applications for specific purposes. It really is frustrating when I find the perfect aplication with all the features we are looking for except for one. An API.Why the hell do you go an build a really sweet application with killer features and you don't add an API. It just seems like it goes against all logic these days to release a partial or no API at all.
Kin Lane

Firefox Add-On Overcrowding

I use quite a few different Firefox Add-Ons. I use Amazon S3 Firefox Organizer, EC2 UI, Google Notebook, coCommnet, Shareaholic, just to name a few. My right click, tray and toolbar is just getting very crowded. It would be nice if someone logically built out a framework for these to display. I hope with Firefox 3.0 coming out they find a solution. It would be nice if I could manage what showed up where.
Kin Lane

Amazon Launchs new S3 Analysis Tool

Amazon just launched a new analysis tool for Amazon S3 called, S3Stat. This tool uses the log files generated by S3, analyzes them using Webalizer, and generates a variety of reports. Take a look at the sample reports to learn more. There's a one-month free trial and usage after that costs just $2 per month. Take a look at the Read more →
Kin Lane

Map of the Undersea Internet World

I came across this picture of the undersea cables running around the world. I thought it was real interesting to see how our I...
Kin Lane

A Chance at a Personal Introduction Using Question and Answer Sites

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.
Kin Lane

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

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...
Kin Lane

Google's New Social Graph API

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.
Kin Lane

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

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...
Kin Lane

Moving to the Next Challenge and Shifting From Web Programming

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...
Kin Lane

Defining My Social Media Index and Settings Some Benchmarks

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...
Kin Lane

A Wearable Camcorder and Community Site for Publishing

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 ...
Kin Lane

Marketing through Reputation Management

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. ...
Kin Lane

Video Interview with Author of Now is Gone

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 →
Kin Lane

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

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...
Kin Lane

New Flash Widget Builder from Sprout Builder

I was just playing around with the new widget builder from
Kin Lane

Google Checkout has a New Order Report API

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 →
Kin Lane

Gmail Greasemonkey API issue and Social Programming

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...