Technorati Tags: iphone, Testing

For now, take a look at Google’s latest offering — Now Hiring Autocompleters!

http://www.google.com/intl/en/jobs/uslocations/mountain-view/autocompleter/index.html

Technorati Tags: april fool's, april fool's day, autocomplete, autocompleters, Google

Bram Stoker’s Dracula was a novel told in the format of a series of journal entries and letters, all with times and dates attributed to them. This type of work is called an epistolary novel. In a brilliant move, blogger Whitney Sorrow (quite an appropriate surname for this project, no?) has set up a blog to publish each journal entry, letter and so on that makes up the story of Dracula on the dates listed on those letters. One, this lets you follow along as part of the story and will give you an unprecedented sense of the time interval over which the story unfolds. Two, you get to read a classic novel in small, manageable snippets over a period of time. *Brilliant* work.

Check out the Dracula Feed and subscribe to follow along with the story. You may need to install a garlic or stake widget to your blog for safety reasons after visiting this site.

There are other journals and other “Real-Time Literary Blog Projects” underway, some live now, listed on the Dracula Feed that look well worth checking out. Henry David Thoreau’s Journal for example.

Technorati Tags: blogosphere, dracula, epistolary

Twitter:  What Is It Anyway?

Twitter is a nifty little micro-blogging platform, allowing you to express anything and everything, as long as it’s under 140 characters long.  It now looks like Twitter may become part of the Google suite, including such services as Blogger, Picasa and YouTube.  Why would Google be eager to pick up Twitter?  Twitter holds many advantages for both the lay-user and professional.  Let’s go over a couple of the former first, then we’ll get into the real power behind Twitter for professionals.

For the individual, Twitter is a quick and easy way to keep in touch with others.  A lot of famous people, celebrities, news anchors, authors, singers, government workers, scientists (including members of NASA) and so forth are using Twitter and you can interact with them directly through this wonderful website.

Many social applications have “friend” options, where you add someone as a friend.  In the case of Twitter, they’re refered to as “Followers”.  Particularly clever term for anyone needing a boost of self-esteem.  On your Twitter home page, you have a news feed that shows the latest posts by anyone you’ve chosen to follow.  Post regularly, and post useful information, and through no effort of your own, people will begin to follow you.

Messages/Posts on Twitter have become known as Tweets.  There are many independent applications being developed for Twitter to make it even quicker, easier and less obtrusive to your online experience to send a Tweet out to the world.  So let’s take a look at how Twitter works and I’ll share some tips on getting the most out of Twitter.

Twitter is Where it’s @.

An example of the power of Twitter is the ability of hold conversations.  Typing @username where “username” is the username of whomever you’re talking to allows you to speak back and forth with anyone on Twitter.  You can set these messages to the default public view, or you can make them private.  What’s so great about this is that Twitter is becoming a replacement for email.  When you get a really long email, do you sit and read through the whole thing when you first see it — or do you read the other emails, then wait until you get a moment to sit and go through the long one?

Exactly.  It’s much easier to send a quick message, wait for a response, then continue with another message, and so on, as opposed to sending a huge email all at once.  Sometimes a huge email is called for, but in most cases, it’s easier to talk in small doses and on the go.

Twitter is integrated with all the latest cell phones as well, so it’s truly conversation on the go.  Don’t want to pay extra for text-messaging services on your cell phone?  use Twitter instead of sending texts.  Make them private tweets if you like.  With many cell phones, you can even have the Twitter API notify you when you have a new message, just as traditional text messaging does.

# that.

Want to join a conversation or meet new people with a similar interest?  Typing #subject or some variation thereof, where “subject” is obviously the subject of interest, or spotting a #subject already in use, allows any number of people to track and participate in a conversation about that subject.  How?  RSS feeds.  Everything in Twitter contains an RSS feed.  That’s one easy way of tracking a conversation.  What’s another?

Best Twitter Applications For Your Needs

My favorite program/app for keeping on top of Twitter is Tweetdeck.  They had a few glitches early on, but they’ve since ironed things out.  I’ve tried several others, and they’re all great — Twhirl, Twitterific and so on — but, Tweetdeck is my current favorite.  Twhirl is great if you have multiple accounts and you want to keep them all open simultaneously.  So that comes in handy sometimes.  Business account.  Personal account.  Etc.

I also use the Firefox/Flock plugin, Twitterbar.  Twitterbar incorporates directly into the browser address bar, so all you have to do to post an interesting link and/or message, is type it in the address bar and click the Twitterbar button.

Take a look at how easy Twitterbar is to use.  Here’s the standard address bar once you’ve installed the Twitterbar add-on.  That light blue “t” is the Twitterbar button:

When you send a link, Twitterbar will automatically convert it to a TinyURL to save space, so you can send really long links and you’ll still have around a 120 characters worth of room left.  You can send the link by itself, or you can type in a message, such as this:

To send it to Twitter, you just mouse over the blue “t”, and it will show you how many characters you have left.  If you’re still under the limit, it’ll be green.  If you’ve gone over, it’ll be red.  If it’s green, just click that round green button, as shown below, and it’s off to Twitter:

Sounds like a pretty thorough explanation, but the process is really easy.  You’re reading an interesting news article online, for example.  You go up to the address bar and add after the URL, “Interesting article on *some subject*, let me know what you think.” Then click the “t” and you’re done.  Mere seconds to send out a message and get some feedback.  That’s the power of Twitter.  And that’s not even the major power behind the site.

Twitter:  The Socially-Powered Up-To-The-Second Market Research Tool

There used to be a search engine called Summize that allowed you to search Twitter posts.  A little less than a year ago, Twitter bought Summize and integrated it into their platform.  Now it’s Twitter Search, which you can find at http://search.twitter.com and, more recently, at your Twitter home page in the right sidebar.  This is why Google really needs Twitter.

Let me pause to relate a story.  I follow @MarsRover.  The NASA team involved in the Mars Rover project posted immediate updates on their findings as they happened during the project.  Generally, they posted them speaking from the perspective of the Mars Rover itself, which was a cute perk.  Well, one of the great finds from the Mars Rover was ICE.  The Rover started to dig to get a soil sample, and instead, found that just below the dirt in that location was a layer of ice.  They even posted photos via TwitPic.

Here’s the tie-in.  A few days later, I was reading various online news sites, and what did I find?  One of the biggest news sites, run by one of the biggest publicly traded companies, had just released an article about the Mars Rover finding ice.

I was days ahead of the news.  Those of us in online marketing will realize just how powerful this truly is.  I could have written and released an article on it before the major news sites and shows even caught wind of it.  If that doesn’t impress you, let’s take it to a brick-and-mortar, corporate level.

Twitter’s search engine is the most powerful market research tool ever created.  Search any subject, any service or product, and you get immediate feedback of what the consumers using those products think about it.  Let’s say your company just released a product.  You can track what people are saying about your product by searching Twitter.  Each search creates an RSS feed of that search.  Subscribe to the RSS feed of your search and you’ll be updated anytime someone tweets about it.

This means several things.  Here’s three major points:

1)  If you’re looking for a product to promote, then you can search Twitter and get a measure of the general opinion consumers have about that product.  Do they like it?  What do they like about it?  What do they not like about it?  What are its weaknesses?  Where can it be improved?  What type of people are talking about the product?
Which leads us to our next point,

2) If you’re developing a product, you can search for your competitor’s products and get the public’s opinion on the competitor’s weaknesses.  What didn’t they like about it?  What’s its shortcoming?  Where does it need to be improved?  Every product has a weakness.  You can now tailor yours to address the weaknesses left by your competition to offer a better solution for the consumer.

3) If you have a product, and you search Twitter, only to find out that there’s a generally negative perception of your product, you can start damage control on the spot.  It took a few days for the NASA find to hit news sites, so you potentially have a few days to try to remedy the situation before it becomes a major issue.  Stomp the problem before it takes a major PR campaign to resolve.

A Few Considerations

If I had to guess, I’d say that Twitter is going to release an advertising solution that’s tied to their search engine.  PPC style search marketing.  They have the base for it.  Even Facebook is doing it.  If the rumors are true about the Google deal, then it would likely be easy for Google to incorporate Twitter Search into their Search Network solution for Adwords.  Though, I would like to see a separate advertising platform for Twitter.  The real-time, organic nature of Twitter Search may necessitate such a new and unique approach.

I hope you’ve found this useful as not only an introduction to Twitter, but a guide as to a few ways to think about Twitter itself and how it’s useful in a personal and professional context.  I’d love to hear some comments if you found any of this helpful.

Technorati Tags: Google, Social Media, Tweetdeck, Twhirl, Twitter, Twitter Search, Twitterbar, Twitterific

Anyone else see this one coming?  I’m preparing a post on some of the valuable elements of Twitter, but in the meantime, rumors are gaining credence that Google is in the process of acquiring Twitter.  As you may know, Facebook made an offer of $500 million, which was turned down a few months ago.  Facebook is now mounting an effort to compete with the micro-blogging platform.

Twitter just celebrated its 3rd birthday a couple weeks ago and it’s already one of the fastest growing websites ever.  The move for Google to acquire Twitter is an obvious one from a logistical standpoint.  Google and Microsoft are strong competitors.  Microsoft acquired Facebook not too long ago, and Facebook is currently targetting their efforts in competition with Twitter for micro-blogging, “status updating” dominance.  With Google wanting to stay ahead of the game with Microsoft, and currently having no micro-blogging platform, it’s an obvious choice that Google should want to buy Twitter at any price.

If you’re weighing the odds of whether Twitter would come to an agreement with Google — consider this.  Twitter is currently owned by Biz Stone and Evan Williams.  These are the same guys that created Blogger around 5 years ago.  As you know, Blogger/Blogspot was purchased by Google.  So these guys are on familiar ground.

Why would Google want Twitter at any cost?  Market Research.  To go into detail would take too much room here, so look for another post regarding that this afternoon!

Technorati Tags: Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Search Engines, Social Media, Twitter

Adjusting Privacy Settings For Your Friends Lists

Once you have your lists, you may want to configure a few privacy settings for those lists. For example, let’s assume you create a list of business contacts. You can then adjust the privacy settings on this list so that none of your business contacts can see the more personal areas of your Facebook profile. You can keep some of your friends at a more distant professional level, while keeping your personal friends in the know.  Here’s how:

Let’s do this by example. You can then do the same thing for the other settings in the same area. Okay, so let’s say that you want to create a list of people and call it “Business Contacts”. Let’s also say that you only know them professionally, and you don’t want them to see or interact with your personal friends. Maybe you just want to be sure nobody in your professional life starts messaging people in your personal life. Here’s how you would block your “Business Contacts” list from seeing your personal friends.

First, in the upper right corner, go to Settings and click Privacy Settings.

That will take you to the privacy page. It’s worthwhile looking through all of these, but for our example, click Profile.

This will let you set privacy options for the major elements of your individual profile. You can adjust the privacy settings of each element of your profile, such as “Wall Posts” and “Friends”, so that only certain groups can see it. Continuing our example, scroll down to Friends. Clicking the [?] next to it opens up a detail box to show you what this will adjust.

If you clicked the [?], click Okay to close this note. Then click “My Networks and Friends” to see the rest of the options. These are all very general settings for who is allowed to see your friends. We don’t want to block everyone, only certain groups. So, click Customize.

This will open up an area allowing you to make specific changes.

If you want to manually set it so that everyone can see your friends, click “Everyone on Facebook”. If you want the rest of your friends to only be visible to Friends or even Friends and their Friends, click one of those radio buttons. You can likewise set it so that only certain networks can see your friends. Such as people that went to the same college as you or people that live in the same city. What we’re interested in is this last option. You’ll notice in the above that I’ve selected “Only Friends” are allowed to see my profile. Then it lets me enter an exception. I can enter individual friends’ names, or the name of one or more of my Friends Lists.

So, to prevent Business Contacts from seeing and interacting with the rest of my friends? I chose “Only Friends” are allowed to see who the rest of my friends are as a general privacy choice. In the area beneath, “Except These People”, I would then type the Friends List, Business Contacts. If you have more than one Friends List that you’d like to block, enter the name of another Friends List after that, separating them with a comma between each entry.

You can then do the same for the other privacy settings in your profile. Don’t want your Business Contacts to be able to post to your wall, for any and all to see? No problem, block them. Perhaps a better option: don’t want your Business Contacts to be able to see your wall where your friends may make very personal comments? Adjust your Wall Posts settings the same way we did above.

Conclusion

Thank you for following along with these tutorials. I hope that for many of you, this was an interesting find and a creative way to organize your Facebook to meet your personal and professional needs. I welcome any feedback you may have on these tutorials.

Technorati Tags: Facebook, Friends Lists, Optimization, Privacy, Social Media, Social Networking, Tutorial, Web 2.0

Friends lists are a little more obvious and easy to find in the new Facebook design than they were in the old one.  Clearly, it’s something Facebook wants to emphasize.  So, why do you need to use lists?  How will they help you?

It’s easiest to demonstrate this by example.  Among my Facebook friends, I have fellow marketers, fellow science enthusiasts, classmates, people I went to high school with, family members and people with whom I’ve entered a joint venture or two.  About a year ago, I started categorizing all my Facebook friends into lists.  If the same person fit multiple categories, Facebook would let me put them in as many categories as I like.  If a family member was also a classmate, I could put them in both my Family and Classmates lists.

What makes this so great?

Well, before, it made it really easy to send messages to multiple people.  If I wanted to invite all my family members to a get-together, I could just type the name of that list as the person I’m sending the message to, and everyone in that list gets the message.

What else makes Facebook lists so important?  Two words:  Privacy Settings.

Facebook allows you to customize your privacy settings for each list of friends.  Say you have a big generic list of friends called “Business Contacts” and another list called “Personal Contacts”.  You can make it so that your business contacts don’t see certain elements of your profile, such as your wall, status updates or even your other friends on Facebook.

With the new Facebook homepage, there’s a third reason why Facebook Friends Lists are huge:  Now you can sort your newsfeed by Friends lists and group posts and whatnot.  If you’re just interested in seeing updates from your Classmates at the moment, then you can click the “Classmates” list, available to the left of your newsfeed, and it will only show you updates from people in that list.  To see updates from everyone again, just click “News Feed”.   So, without further ado…

How To Create Facebook Friends Lists

First, login to Facebook, obviously.  Then, click Friends.

This will show you all your friends.  From here, in the left panel, click the option to “Make a Friends List”.

Facebook is now helpful enough to guide you through the rest of the process.  The first step is to name the list to be.  You can change the name later if you like.  To do that, you’ll need to click “Friends”, then move the mouse cursor over one of the lists in the left panel, which will bring up an “edit” option.  Click “edit” and you can change the name of the list.

Then, you just start adding your friends by typing their names or clicking “Select Multiple Friends”.

At this point, you’re finished creating your list.  From here, you can also send a message to a list, or even delete the list if you’ve changed your mind.  Those options are just below the middle panel that contains all the friends in your list.  When you delete a list, it does not delete the friends you put in that list.  It only deletes the list itself, not the actual friends in the list.  The option appears as follows:

That sums up establishing a list.  Now, what about privacy settings?  Look for a post with details on optimizing your Facebook profile for both your personal and professional contacts tomorrow morning.  Thanks for taking the time to read thus far!  Any feedback on whether or not this post has been helpful to you is welcome.

Technorati Tags: Facebook, Friends Lists, Optimization, Privacy, Social Media, Social Networking, Tutorial, Web 2.0

There’s a great show still in its first season on FitTV (owned by Discovery) I wanted to take a moment to note to everyone.  It’s called “Just Cook This!” and it’s currently airing at odd hours like 6pm Saturday night and midnight early Monday.  Times when people with social circles are either out having fun, already out eating or asleep.

Still, this is one of my favorite shows.  It’s hosted by a guy named Sam Zien, or Sam “The Cooking Guy”.  He’s not a professional chef, just a guy that knows how to and likes to cook.  It’s filmed in his house, as is, no pre-arranged already-finished meals waiting in the oven or any of your typical cooking show hyjinx.  If he drops something, they don’t cut it.  If a dog or cat or family member wanders by, they don’t cut it.  Sam’s main goal is to get people to stop going out for dinner, especially fast food.  So the focus of the show is quick meals that taste great and are at least a little better for you than the hurried meals bought when eating out.  It’s a half hour show, with commercials, and he still prepares 3 recipes from beginning to end.  So there’s not a lot of steps, it’s all pretty easy to prepare, and he’s not afraid to use store-bought items to speed things along, like de-veined frozen shrimp still in the shell for example.  It helps the show’s pace that he’s a bit ADHD.

So if you get a chance, check it out, it’s one of those shows that I’m hoping stays on the air.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=KROuNkY_Zvo

Technorati Tags: Discovery Channel, FitTV, Just Cook This, Review, Sam the Cooking Guy

The trouble is, time has passed since the release of Final Fantasy VII.  12 years to be precise.  While the creators of the series have gone on to make great games since then, they’ve also made a few that received less than favorable reviews.  The fan-based demand for a revamp of the game for the modern generation of consoles has been huge.  Ever since the release of Playstation 2 (PS2) nearly a decade ago.  At present, such cries have fallen on deaf ears.  Why update the best selling game of all time for a new generation?  Surely, no good can come of this.  Its own sales history alone suggests thus.  Instead, let us release side stories based on the game.  Tricksey.

Playstation 3 has since been released.  As was a tech demo of PS3′s capabilities.  This demo?  A revamp of the original opening scene from Final Fantasy VII.  Just to twist the knife a little further.  Or perhaps to gauge the response?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWB78CYxGlk

Well, if you’re tired of waiting, do I have news for you…

So here’s the deal.  A wide range of people have come together for the purpose of updating the PC version of Final Fantasy VII to more modern standards.  At first, the group took character models from Kingdom Hearts 2 and such games featuring Final Fantasy VII characters and inserted them into the game.  Turns out, Square didn’t care for that and sent them a cease and desist letter.  However, it seems that it is okay for them to create character models from scratch.

Thus, a talented group of 3D modelers, and even audio engineers rebuilding the music to replace the original midi source files, have come together.  They’ve been working on this for years, rebuilding all the 200+ characters from scratch.  So far, they’re about 70% complete on rebuilding all the playable and non-playable characters, as well as updates to the music quality, screen resolution and so forth.  They have released several mods along the way to convert the old game we all know and love into this work of beauty:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbexquxkt6Y

If you own the PC version of Final Fantasy VII from way back when and want to know how to update it to look like the above, be sure to check out the <a href=”http://wiki.qhimm.com/FF7/Technical/Customising”>QhimmWiki</a> for more information.

Enjoy!

Technorati Tags: FF7, Final Fantasy VII, PS3, Remake

Simplified Dharma Wheel

I want to post about “Lost” and something that needs to be pointed out, but I realize it will contain spoilers for anyone not up-to-date on the series, therefore, don’t click to continue reading unless you don’t mind a brief analysis of the current situation on the show.

Right. So has anyone else noticed that the wheel Locke turns looks exactly like the Dharma Wheel (Dharmachakra)? That and it’s the center of the Dharma initiative. Whose purpose, therefore, is to initiate the Dharma. It’s time to turn the Wheel again, to awaken the Dharma in others. The Dharma Wheel, the Dharmachakra, represents the teachings of Buddha, the turning of the wheel represents the unfolding or stages of revelation of those teachings, or even just the spread of those teachings to new areas. For those areas, the Wheel has turned and the teachings have been revealed there. Locke turning the wheel means Locke is giving the teaching. Locke has been reborn on the island twice now — once figuratively and once literally.

First, Ben turns the Wheel. When Ben gets to the Wheel, it appears to be stuck. The impression is given that the Wheel is jammed or broken and needs to be set in motion again. This could easily be symbolic of having lost “the way”. Ben turns the Wheel in an effort to move the island. Those that were on the island when Ben turned the Wheel become unstuck in time, having no place in reality. Ben turning the Wheel represented Ben’s teachings, Ben’s way. As it turns out, Ben was not supposed to turn the Wheel. Now those present at the turning are unstuck in time, having no place in any reality. Locke had to turn the Wheel. Locke’s way was in accordance with the teachings, and when he turns the Wheel, those present return to reality. They’re no longer unstuck.

Ben Turning the Dharma Wheel

Here’s the curious part. Let’s try to track the chronology of events. First, the Oceanic 6 leave. Then Ben moves the island. The survivors still on the island become unstuck in time. Three years pass in the outside world. As the survivors are skipping through time, it may simply seem like moments for them, depending on “where” they land in time. Ben seems to be trying to protect everyone on the island from agents of Charles Whitmore and enlists Sayad’s assistance. Sayad stops helping Ben at some point and retires to the Dominican Republic. Locke finds the Wheel and turns it. For the islanders, it seems like only days have passed. Now, Locke is in the outside world and it seems that three years have passed there. When Locke turns the Wheel, the time shifts stop and they’re in the 1970′s. The Dharma Initiative is still in place and they seem to have a truce with the outsiders/”Others”.

Here’s where it gets interesting. For Locke, the trip is instantaneous, although apparently 3 years have passed in the outside world. Likewise, since Locke left, three years have passed on the island. Sounds like relativistic time dilation, but that would mean Locke traveled a distance of nearly 3 light years. An Einstein-Rosen Bridge? Hm. Whatever the case, three years have passed for everyone except Locke. Locke jumped from the island to three years in the future in the outside world. During this whole time, however, the survivors on the island have stopped skipping through time. Yet, the Oceanic 6 are informed they need to get back to the island to save the survivors still there. Those survivors are no longer jumping through time, yet the motivation for the Oceanic 6 to go back to the island was that the survivors still on the island needed to be saved. Therefore, the point of all this — it’s not the jumping through time that’s the problem from which they need to be saved. That was resolved when Locke left. Locke, however, wouldn’t have known this.

Summing up, where does that leave us? The Oceanic 6 are back. Three years have passed for them. Three years have passed for the survivors on the island. Not so for Locke. The island is now situated in the late 1970′s. The presumed threat the survivors needed to be saved from was being unstuck in time. However, that was resolved three years before the return of the Oceanic 6 to the island. What, then, is the threat that is facing the Oceanic 6?

Or, was this just a mistake of the writers not being able to follow their own storyline.

I suspect there is indeed another threat to the island. Maybe, though I really hope not, something involving 1970′s Charles Whitmore, who may still be on the island in the 1970′s. Maybe the smoke monster machine whatever hasn’t come into play yet in the 1970′s and that’s the challenge they’ll face. Ben hasn’t taken over at this point in the island’s history because his initiation rite was to kill off the members of the Dharma Initiative, including his own father. As the Dharma Initiative is lounging about the place, it’s safe to assume they have not yet met their demise at the hands of Ben yet.

Well, I’ve finished my rant for the time being. If they’ve been doing just fine all this time, these three years with the Dharma Initiative, without the return of the Oceanic 6, then there really was no need to bring them all back. In which case, the entire build-up of this season so far will have been all for naught. So I’m curious as to actual reason they needed to be brought back.

We’ll see what happens. I may be way off base here, that’s entirely possible, but I think my reasoning is sound.

Technorati Tags: dharma, lost